lay all your love on me
by she.dreams.in.colour
Summary: "You know what you should do? Get over that 'I-have-to-have-feelings-for-the-men-I-sleep-with' crap. Go to some random bar, flirt with some good looking guy and get laid. Casual, recreational, no strings attached." Damon said. Caroline should have known better than to listen. AU/AH
1. Mother by the Cradle

Prologue

**Mother by a Cradle (1887)**

"_The lamps are burning and the starry sky is over it all."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

"Hi. We need to see an ob-gyn."

The receptionist looks up, smiles mindlessly when she is greeted by the sight of a handsome young man in a crisp tailored shirt with the sleeves pulled up mid-arm.

Damon Salvatore looks younger than his age of twenty seven, gratitude to his casually worn dark hair and stunning eyes of clear blue. He is not at all muscular but the confident smirk that graces his taut face sends a message that it's probably not good to mess with him (and it isn't). An expensive Tag Heuer watch adorns his left wrist, but even without this he can hump his way through the greater Chicago metropolis (and he does) because to put it simply, he is gorgeous and he knows it.

Not immune to the Salvatore charm, the receptionist briefly considers flirting, but she drops the idea quickly when she sees a flash of gold from behind Damon. And then the receptionist remembers that he's here asking for a certain kind of doctor - _that_ certain kind of doctor.

"Please fill in these forms." She simply says, handing Damon a clipboard and a pen.

He begins to read the first lines printed on the paper.

_Patient's Name. Age. Date of Birth._

He thinks for a moment and then grins as he writes down 'Barbara Millicent Roberts'. He jots down '23' on the next item, remembering that 'the patient' is the same age as his younger sibling, Stefan the Better Brother. However, he can't for his life remember when her birthday is. Funny that he should forget; her birthday last year goes down as one of the most dramatic (he's trying to avoid saying 'worst') days of his life, which the two of them spent at a swanky hotel in Cabo with a lot of guilt (for his part) and crying (for her part) and no sex whatsoever (this is the part that makes him saddest).

"Hey, when's your birthday again?" He turns around and asks.

The receptionist catches a glimpse of the girl behind him and is suddenly glad that she decided not to flirt.

Caroline Forbes is very pretty, to say the least. Waves of sunshine gold hair cascade to her shoulders, gently framing her thoroughly absorbing sky blue eyes. She gives the impression of sweetness and innocence, to which Damon comments that the first might be partly true but the second is definitely not. Today she has on a casual ensemble of a green dress and pastel pink flats, and it is a youthfully refreshing sight, really - but the crease in her forehead and the death glare that she shoots at Damon makes her look downright murderous.

"Seriously, you can't remember when my birthday is?" She cries in disbelief, recalling the past year.

Damon rolls his eyes. "If I knew when it is, I wouldn't be asking you, would I?"

He gets a smack in the arm for a reply.

"Ugh. I don't know why I put up with you." Caroline huffs. She would have said more, but her phone has begun to ring and she fishes it out of her hand bag.

She cringes, feeling a slight nervousness when she sees the name 'Stefan' in the caller ID. She shows it to Damon and takes a second to bite her lower lip before pressing the 'answer' button.

"Hey, Stefan."

"Hi, Care. Is Damon with you? I've been trying to call him for the past thirty minutes and he hasn't been answering."

"Uh, yeah, he's right here."

She shoves the phone into Damon's hands and the later frowns in confusion before taking the phone to his ear.

"Sup, Stef?"

"Where the hell are you and why haven't you answered any of my calls?" Stefan practically screams. Damon has to hold the phone away from his ear to save his auditory senses and Caroline knows that he's not exaggerating because she can hear every single word that Stefan said, and her phone isn't on loudspeaker.

"Jesus Christ, Stefan. Take it easy." Damon says, careful not to answer his brother's first question because telling Stefan that he is in a hospital trying to see an ob-gyn with his ex does not seem like a good idea. His hands dig into his pockets in search of his own phone, but he doesn't find it. "Shit, I must've left my phone in the car. What's so important?"

"What's so important? We were supposed to have a phone conference with the lumber subcontractors at four o'clock!"

Damon glances at his watch, which reads 4:30pm and then shrugs half-heartedly. "Oh yeah I completely forgot. Listen, I'll just go get my phone and then I'll call you right away so we can have that conference, okay?"

"Fine, but don't take too long. I swear, Damon, if you don't call me in the next five minutes, you're not going to hear the end of it." Stefan says threateningly before hanging up.

Damon sighs and hands both the phone and the clipboard to Caroline. "You answer the rest. I have to go down to the basement to get my phone in the car."

Caroline looks down at the floor, suddenly feeling guilty. "Damon?"

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry you're missing on things just to do this with me. I'm sorry I'm ruining your life together with mine."

Damon isn't sure what to say. He thinks there might be something wrong with how things are being run in heaven, like some angel fell asleep on his job or something, because Caroline doesn't deserve what he thinks is coming to her. And he hates himself because he practically gave her the lighter that burned with dynamite's wick.

"Don't be." He tells her, but he can't even look at her in the eye. "I shouldn't have given you ideas in the first place. It's my life and I shouldn't have tried to make it yours too."

Caroline smiles sadly, and Damon decides that whatever happens after this, he's going to make sure that Caroline has the best of everything that his dead father's money could afford.

-o-

The trip down the basement parking is short. It's easy enough for Damon to find his dashing blue Camaro, even catches a wink from a flirty blonde he sees getting into her utterly pink BMW while he's on his way back to the elevator. He looks away immediately because her breasts look five sizes too large for her stick-thin body and her face looks like there's more botox than blood in it. Idly he remembers that Rainey-Harper General has a very reputable aesthetic surgery department.

When he enters the elevator, there's only one other occupant, some stolid looking guy with ash blonde hair. Damon lifts a hand to press floor button number six but it's already lit so he drops it.

The elevator does not make a trip to any other floors so they get to the sixth level relatively quick. The obligatory 'ding!' his heard and Damon prepares to step out of the elevator, but five seconds later and the doors still don't open.

He frowns and pushes the door opening button, but nothing happens. He tries it four more times, gets the same damning result.

"Fuck." He says, turning to the other guy. "We're stuck."

The other guy punches the emergency button and the intercom comes alive.

"Elevator number four, what's your emergency?" A voice from the other line says.

"We're on the sixth floor, the lift is stuck and we can't get out." The guy replies.

Must be British, Damon thinks, considering his accent and his use of the word 'lift'.

"How many people are with you in there?"

"There's only two of us."

"Okay. Keep yourselves calm and don't panic. We're going to send people to fix that right away."

"Dammit." Damon utters, checking his phone which of course has no signal. Stefan is going to kill him if he doesn't get out of the stupid contraption immediately.

Minutes pass but nothing happens. When Damon hears the intercom voice again, he wants to all but scream at it.

"Maintenance is on it but it might take a while. Are you two alright?"

"Yes," Damon replies testily. "But if we're not going to be out of here in the next fucking minute, I need you to get hold of somebody for me. It's a matter of life and death - my life and death."

'The Voice' tries to be helpful. "I'll see what I can do."

"Okay, there's a blonde in the sixth floor reception area. She's wearing a green dress and her name is Caroline. Tell her to call my brother and explain that I'm really stuck in an elevator so I can't get on that godforsaken conference."

"Sixth floor, blonde, green dress, Caroline, got that." The intercom guy repeats. "I'm going to call sixth floor right now."

"Thank you." Damon answers dryly, without a single iota of gratitude in his voice. He closes his eyes and rubs his temples. "I hate this fucking hospital. Two hundred dollar charge to see a doctor and I still get stuck in an elevator? This is impossible. Lord, kill me now."

He shakes his head when he suddenly realizes that he's ranting aloud. The other guy is looking at him like he's insane or something.

"Sorry, rough day." Damon apologizes. "My name's Damon."

His stuck-mate nods. "Klaus."

"OB floor too?" Damon begins. He usually doesn't do this, chatting up strangers, but right now he needs something to distract him from all of this, whatever 'this' is.

"Chauffeur duties." Klaus replies offhandedly. It's his second week.

"Your girlfriend's a doctor or something?"

"My brother had his license suspended for DUI."

"Sounds like a handful." Damon comments, though he's not one to judge because he's been slapped with enough DUI charges to worry about license revocation himself. He shoves his hands into his pockets and wonders why he's suddenly anxious before he shares what he is there for, though Klaus doesn't even ask. "I'm taking my ex-girlfriend for a check-up. I hope to God that it's a false alarm but she might be pregnant."

"Good luck with that, mate." Klaus curtly says, noting Damon's choice of words.

Ex-girlfriend. Americans seem to be very fond of such arrangement: knocking a girl up, not marrying her, splitting up later, finding another girl to marry and creating these very complex family systems. Not that there's anything wrong with that – his family itself is complex.

"I really wouldn't mind a kid." Damon says reflectively, unguarded for a moment. "It's just… it's gonna go hard on her. If it were mine she wouldn't have to worry so much, but –"

He stops himself when he realizes that he's said too many goddamn things.

Klaus keeps his face blank out of civility (Hell, when did he start valuing civility), but if he had it his way he would have told Damon that if he's planning on raising a kid that isn't his, he shouldn't treat the kid like dirt. He holds his tongue because it isn't his place to be giving unsolicited advice to strangers, but he briefly wonders how different his life would have been if some stranger had told his 'father' Mikael those same words.

Then again, he's a fool for even thinking that it would make a difference. Knowing Mikael, the man would have punched a hole straight into the stranger's face and told him to shut up.

"So, you paint?" Damon says, changing the topic.

Klaus looks down at his shirt and notices the smudges of blue for the first time. It annoys him – he never used to be a messy with his pigments.

"Now and then." He replies tersely.

Ding! The two men hear the elevator bell again, and thankfully this time the blessed doors actually open. Klaus glances at his watch (Patek Philippe, a gift from his mother) – they were trapped for almost fifteen minutes.

Outside, two maintenance guys and a nurse meet them.

"Are you okay?" the nurse asks.

"I'm good." Damon says. "Just make sure you fix that thing. If I ever get stuck in your elevators again, I'm going to fucking kill somebody."

The maintenance guys are already on it, putting an 'elevator closed' sign and tapes across the doors to restrict entrance.

Damon turns to Klaus. "See you around then."

Klaus acknowledges him with a nod and walks away.

-o-

"Ms. Barbara Roberts?" The receptionist calls out. "Dr. Leroux will see you now."

"That's you." Damon says, rising from his seat. He straightens his shirt, preparing to go in and accompany her like the good ex-boyfriend that he really hasn't been. On second thought, he wasn't even a good boyfriend to begin with.

Caroline does not move. She bites her nails nervously and Damon knows that something is very wrong because the girl takes pride in her perfect French-tips. He's seen her credit card bill and there's a small fortune spent on her nails alone.

"Hey." Damon says softly. "We need to go in."

Caroline glances at him and there's a look of pure fear in her eyes. "I'm dead, aren't I?"

"Not really." The Salvatore replies. "You're going to be fine."

"Mom is going to be utterly shamed. This, barely a year after graduation. And I don't even know who the father is."

Damon shrugs. "If that's what you're worried about, then tell everyone that it's mine."

"Are you crazy?" Caroline almost shrieks.

"No, it makes perfect sense. We were together for a year –"

"Two." Caroline corrects him grudgingly.

"- fine, two years, and who's to say that we didn't hook up sometime after that? Exes do it all the time."

"I'm not making you take responsibility for something you didn't do."

"You're not making me do anything, Caroline. I'm practically volunteering." Damon says seriously. "My inheritance from the old frog will last twenty more recessions even if I stop working right now. I could either spend all of that on my best friends poker and alcohol or spend some of it on your kid."

The blonde smiles, albeit sadly, and everything – the guilt, the pity, the helplessness – makes Damon feel violently ill.

"It won't solve anything, Damon, we're just making the mess bigger."

"Who cares? It doesn't even have to be mine biologically, I just have to sign on the birth certificate as the father and I'm the legal dad."

"What if by some miracle you'll want to settle down – "

Caroline stops herself mid-sentence. Both of them know that there's only one woman Damon might actually want to settle down with. Damon has been in love with her forever, even when he was with Caroline, and the catastrophic break-up they had on Caroline's birthday last year was partly because of her. Unfortunately, the woman is Elena, Caroline's best friend and Stefan's girlfriend. Correction, fiancé. Two weeks ago she accepted Stefan's simple marriage proposal that involved a helicopter and a ten-minute fireworks invasion on the Chicago skyline. There was even an article about it in the newspaper the next day.

"I think we both know that it's not going to happen." Damon says, willing himself to look unaffected.

"Ms. Roberts?" the nurse calls again.

Damon takes her hand and helps her up. "Let's talk about this later. Right now just let the Doc check you up."

-o-

"Barbara Millicent Roberts?" Dr. Leroux says, reading the name written on the patient's information paper. "Your parents named you after Barbie?"

Caroline could have wrung Damon's neck then and there, but she settles for kicking him in the foot. This, however, is immensely inadequate to keep the Salvatore from chuckling.

"So what do the test results say, Dr. Leroux?" Caroline asks, her heart pounding.

_Please, please, please say it's negative… _

The red-headed doctor smiles. "Congratulations to you and Ken here, you're six weeks pregnant."

Caroline keeps quiet. Inside she feels like the world has come crashing down. She tries to blink away the tears that are starting to blur her sight and succeeds only with a massive amount of self-control.

Damon looks somber and wants to comfort her or something – but he doesn't really know what to do. He had taken it up to himself to act as the pillar of strength that she could lean in for support since suspicions of her gravid condition had arisen, but for the first time, he has to accept that in this heartbreak, he has no part. He is but a bystander who, no matter how much he wants to help her, can do nothing but watch her pain helplessly from the sidelines.

Sensing that the couple is obviously not pleased with the news, the doctor clears her throat and proceeds to speak with a plain rather than jovial tone.

"The baby looks healthy but I'm going to prescribe prenatal vitamins to – "

"But how?" Caroline abruptly cuts in. "I was on the pill."

"Did you miss taking it, even once?"

"No, never. Once a day, at the exact same time."

"Were you given antibiotics six weeks ago, maybe penicillin?"

Caroline takes a moment to think and bites her lip when she remembers. "Penicillin, yes. I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth extracted and the dentist told me to take antibiotics a week before the operation."

"You have your culprit then. Antibiotics such as Penicillin directly decrease the effectiveness of contraceptive medicine. If you take Penicillin while on the pill, you might as well not take any of the latter." Dr. Leroux explains sympathetically.

Caroline swallows. "What are my options then, doctor?"

Damon looks at her like she's crazy, and that's saying something because Damon's bar for 'crazy' is set pretty high.

Dr. Leroux looks down on the positive test results on her table. She's not comfortable with the topic, herself having tried to conceive with her boyfriend for the last two years but to no avail. Nonetheless she tries to be professional. "If you don't want to go on with this pregnancy there are several things you may consider, but I would rather recommend you to another specialist because it's not part of my expertise."

"Wait a second." Damon says, frowning. "Don't tell me that you're seriously considering an abortion?"

"Wow, you have no idea how moral you sound right now." Caroline snaps. "How many women did you sleep with when we were together?"

Damon doesn't even pay attention to the insult, doesn't bother to tell her that he really didn't fuck anyone else when he was still with her. "Oh, Barbie, we both know that my morality went down the drain a long time ago. I'll sleep well at night even if you get rid of the kid. It's you who's the topic here. Will you be able to sleep at night?"

Caroline doesn't say anything but clenches her fists in her lap. She knows that Damon is right – she's really been giving him less credit than he deserved.

The Salvatore turns to the ob-gyn with a grim look on his face that makes Dr. Leroux grateful. At least the baby's father seems like a level-headed guy.

"She needs a lot of time to think about those options, doctor. Eight months if I can have my way and trust me, I will. Just tell me what I have to do, what I have to buy, what she should avoid while she's pregnant." Damon declares.

He turns to Caroline one more time and the blonde swears that she has never been more grateful that she has Damon Salvatore in her life, even if it's just as a friend. "Look, Caroline, I don't want the kid any more than you do, but for God's sake, I can support it. One mistake isn't worth damning your soul to hell for."

-o-

Klaus is in the hallway making his way back to the floor's reception area when from the corner of his eye, he spies the sight of a familiar blonde and his heart all but stops.

He can recognize her from miles away because he has been trying to paint her portrait for the last month and a half. He doesn't even know her name, but he knows every line, every curve, every arch and every bend of her body. He met her at a bar six weeks ago and was instantly drawn to her because of her eyes – blue green pools that compellingly drew him towards her, inexplicable, mysterious, primal and almost as if fated. Her eyes spoke to him like the stars spoke to Van Gogh, begged to be rendered in the strokes of a brush.

He does not remember much about that night, but he clearly remembers how he tasted each of her emotions when he tasted her in his bed; sweet and rich and sharp and bitter all at the same time. He didn't even bother going to sleep after the sex-induced slumber had taken over his muse. He went straight to his studio, lashing at blank canvas with a myriad of strokes and colors.

Before that night he hadn't even touched his brushes in two years. She melted the jaded exterior that he had encased himself in since he left London two and a half years ago, and he wouldn't have minded buying her breakfast or something the next day if it weren't for the fact that she was gone when he returned to his bedroom in the morning. The walk of shame – Americans seemed to be fond of that too.

He's filled with the urge to run towards her and drown himself in her eyes again – because bloody hell, he has tried with everything he has to finish her painting but there's just something in her eyes that he can't copy into his canvas without burning with the desire to see his subject again, to look into her eyes and make sure that he immortalizes in canvas everything that is in there.

But because he's Klaus, his cool, detached logic prevails and he knows that there are two things that are very wrong with this picture.

One, she unmistakably came out of Sage's office. Sage, his brother's girlfriend, is an ob-gyn. Two, she was with that guy he got stuck with in the Elevator. Damon, wasn't it?

The realization hits him like a truck.

_He wastes not a second longer but allows her collarbone a faint lick before traveling downward and letting his stubbled jaw graze the valley between her breasts. She groans in a blend of pleasure and frustration, the earlier because he feels too fucking good against her skin and the later because he's not touching her in the places where she needs him to._

_Her hands fist into his ash blonde locks, guiding his mouth towards the peaks of her breasts, but he growls and pries her hands away to pin them to either side of her head._

_"Patience, love." He drawls, though he can hardly control himself as well._

_He dips his head low into her chest and finally gives her what she wants. An electric jolt surges throughout her body as his tongue swirls around her, and he smirks as her head rolls back when he bites her gently. He takes his time licking, lapping and luxuriating in her, loving every breathless moan and every needy mewl that he elicits from her. Hell, he hasn't even started actually fucking her._

_He lets her hands go and gives her a few minutes to catch her breath because she is going to need it when he moves in to rack more pleasure into her. In the mean time he takes in the flushness of her now sweat-damped skin, the way her bare chest rises and falls rapidly as she breathes - and he can't help but be pleased at the state that he reduced her into._

_He decides then and there that he wants this - he needs this._

_Opening her eyes, she beckons him to come closer and draws him again into her sweet, sweet mouth, kissing him fervently as she arches her body closer to his to create that deliciously maddening friction. But he pulls back because she closes her eyes when he kisses her and he wants to see – he has to see – those orbs when he brings her into abandon._

_He reaches for his wallet, where he has a ready condom in one of the folds. It should be on the bedside table – except that it's not._

_Shit. He must have left it in the bar._

_She reads through the spike of auburn annoyance in his sky blue eyes and smiles as she soothes him with soft kisses along his jaw, ending by the shell of his ear._

_"It's okay. I'm on the pill." She whispers._

_He doesn't need to hear it twice._

…

"_I really wouldn't mind a kid. It's just… it's gonna go hard on her. If it were mine she wouldn't have to worry so much, but –" _

Damon sees Klaus, nods in acknowledgement as he leads Caroline away from Sage's office and on to god knows where. Klaus is frozen in his place, both his head and heart rate racing as he swallows and tries to decide what to do. A moment later, Damon and his muse disappear.

Klaus numbly makes his way to Sage's office, where his brother's startled girlfriend stares at him in surprise. "Klaus?"

"Caroline – why was she here?" he asks Sage immediately, remembering the name that Damon said when he told the intercom voice to call someone for him.

"Caroline? Who's Caroline?"

"The girl who was here – blonde, green dress, with a guy named Damon."

"So Caroline's her real name. Well, I'm thankful she wasn't really named after Barbie."

"Why was she here?"

Sage looks conflicted. "That's confidential, Klaus. I'm not supposed to divulge information about my patients."

"Why was she here, Sage?" Klaus insists. "Is she…"

The red-headed doctor gives up. "Yes. Why do you want to know?"

"How far along? Six weeks?"

"How did you know? Do you know her or something?"

Klaus doesn't answer. He races out of Sage's office, combs through the whole floor trying to find his golden-haired muse.

She is gone.

-o-

A/N:

1. I don't know where this plot bunny came from but it has been plaguing my mind for a while now so I went ahead and posted it. At four thousand four hundred something words it's almost twice as long as a chapter of Only Red Flames Live Here Now, but the truth is I'm not even sure if I can go on with this because there's something about this story that just bugs me. Anyway, you have been published, plot bunny, so please rest in peace and leave me alone.

2. Speaking of Only Red Flames… yeah no update for the past two weeks and possibly for some more time. I don't know why but after the last chapter I was filled with immense disappointment in myself and what I've done to the story. I'm not abandoning it though – I just need some time to think what I should best do next. Still, I remain grateful to everyone who has supported the story this far. :)

As usual, hope you enjoyed this and have a great week ahead!


	2. Girl in White

Chapter 1

**Girl in White (1890)**

"_I feel, then, like a weaver who sees that his threads are all tangled."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

_One year ago..._

The plane ride to Cabo San Lucas is a plainly uneventful one, thanks or no thanks to American Airlines. The flight is smooth if not monotonous, and inside the aircraft the passengers have taken to various activities to keep themselves occupied.

In seats 08A and 08B, a nauseatingly sweet-looking couple is happily taking BF-GF pictures that get precisely eight hundred sixteen likes when they are uploaded a week later. The pretty brunette leans into her handsome boyfriend and the former college football star smiles like he has everything he can ask in this life for. Click! It's the perfect picture of blissful young love, right out of a toothpaste commercial. All hail King Stefan and Queen Elena.

Seats 09D and 09F are a different story. Seated in this row are a pretty brunette and a handsome guy as well, but the existence of empty seat 09E between them trips the alarms. Last night Bonnie discovered that Jeremy had been lying to her about no longer talking to Anna-the-ex-girlfriend, and saying that she is pissed is an epic understatement. Guilty Gilbert attempts an apologetic glance from his seat but Bonnie's eyes stay glued to the second season of Spartacus which she watches from her tablet. Ilithyia sticks a knife into a rebel's gut and Bonnie imagines Jeremy in the rebel's place.

The tenth row is hard to gauge. In seat B, Caroline flips through the airline magazine, skimming over all the sparkly jewelry for sale and wonders for the first time why anyone would want to buy a diamond ring in the middle of a flight. She turns to her right to remark this to her uncharacteristically quiet boyfriend, whose hand is lost inside his leather jacket's lower pocket the same way his eyes are lost in the infinite canvas of blue outside the window.

"What are you thinking about?" Caroline asks in amusement at 'quiet' Damon.

"Nothing important." Damon replies but there's this enigmatic look on his face.

He's thinking about the diamond ring in his pocket.

Over dinner one week ago, Stefan had told their grinch of a father that he intended to be engaged to Elena about a year from now, can he just have the old man's blessing before he goes out to reserve the entire Skydeck of the Willis Tower and order Olympics-grade fireworks from China. Damon's heart constricts, but as soon as Cartier opens the next day he gets his hands on a solitaire diamond ring which costs him a good twelve thousand dollars.

_No I don't have time for a custom-made engagement ring so just give me the damn thing already or I'll walk across the street to De Beers._

It's the same ring that his fingers are playing with inside his pocket right now, a small white stone set on whatever percent platinum.

"Don't 'nothing' me." Caroline protests playfully. "You're up to something, aren't you?"

Damon smiles broadly. This is why he thinks it's not such a bad idea to be married to Caroline Forbes. She's smart, pretty, knows what he likes to be done in bed and most of all, she's Elena's best friend. He will never forget that look of hurt in the brunette's eyes when she first learned that he was dating Caroline, and until now he sees an unmistakable hint of pain whenever he displays affection for his Barbie girlfriend.

There's a feeling of guilt that bubbles somewhere but selfishness caps the bottle before it bursts.

By the way…is it selfish to want your own happiness?

-o-

At a minimum rate of $950 per suite per night, Hotel Saint-Philippe Ambrière is a good place to burn cash in Cabo. As if the beachfront location wasn't enough, the hotel complex has six large swimming pools that never seem to run out of hot, bikini-clad women who take very liberally to alcohol and even more liberally to men. This is Kol Mikaelson's idea of a good time, inseparably paired with the fact that there will be no bank account depletion in his part because he managed to convince his brother Finn to foot the entire bill.

Speaking of Finn.

Inside Cafe Barrineau, the second of the Mikaelson siblings is patiently awaiting his turn at ordering some morning coffee when he notices that the girl in front of him seems struck by the paintings adorning the cafe's nearby wall. He turns to look at the series of French landscapes himself and his lips curl into a smile.

"You seem to be very taken with those paintings." he remarks as non-stalkerishly as he could when the girl's eyes finally leave the art.

The girl smiles. "They're weird."

"Weird?" Finn repeats. Of all the things you could say to describe a Parisian landscape.

"Yeah. They feel... odd. Like, they're not romantic at all. Aren't French things supposed to be romantic?"

Finn smiles back. "Perhaps the painter was not feeling amorous when he made them."

"Well, most artists are either drunk or crazy when they make their best work, right?"

"Fair point."

"So do you think the painter was drunk or crazy?" the girl asks, looking at the paintings again.

Finn's eyes trail off to a distance, into the direction of a table where there sits a guy wearing a lithe Henley. "Neither. He needed money. Seventy thousand dollars to open his own gallery. He made fifteen paintings in eight weeks and sold them to a dealer in New York. Apparently some of them ended up here."

The girl's eyes widen. "You're not the guy who painted these, are you?"

"No." Finn assures her, and it's true. He almost flunked his visual art elective when he was an undergrad in Cambridge and oh did he get an earful from his father for that.

The conversation is cut short because it's the girl's turn to order. When she's done, she has a to-go tray of six drinks in her hand.

"Care!"

A brunette walks towards the girl and helps her with the coffee, fondly saying something about how the girl apparently always spills drinks. The girl sheepishly protests "That is so not true, Elena!" but she hands her brunette friend the tray anyway.

She grins at Finn as she turns to leave. "See you around."

Finn nods and proceeds to the counter to order a macchiato and a double ristretto. When he has collected the drinks, he heads for the table where the guy in the Henley is at.

"Took you long enough." Klaus says as Finn hands him his ristretto.

"There were plenty of patrons in the cue. One of them even had something to say about your paintings."

Klaus breaks into a small smile. He didn't think that his brother would realize that the paintings in the cafe wall were among the works he made a year ago but then again Finn has always had fantastic visual memory.

"Let me guess. Beautiful? Magnificent? Brilliant?" Amusement laces Klaus' voice but it doesn't mask the fact that each word is said with more vitriol than the average chemistry lab in MIT.

"I believe the exact words were 'weird' and 'not romantic at all'."

"She has a functioning cerebrum then, unlike the art buyers in New York."

Finn sips his macchiato slowly. No matter how other people sing praises about those French landscape paintings, Klaus hates them with all his guts, his kidneys, liver, gall bladder, you get the point. Something about them not being art but merely pretty commodities. Rebekah once sympathetically told him that he was overreacting ("You needed money, you made them and sold them, you have your money, what's the big deal? It's like bonds and stocks, Nik, get over it.") but these artist types have a different coconut up there.

"Do you hate Katherine's paintings as much?" Finn asks out of curiosity.

"I abhor her as much." Is the casual answer.

The story is a joke that somehow made its way to reality. Determined not to be supported by his birth-certificate father's money, Klaus painted fifteen landscapes during his first two months in America, sold out the first eight hours they were put on display. With the seventy grand proceeds he set up his own gallery only to find that he had burned himself out, resulting to a nasty case of artist block which has spanned a year in the running. Now he's turned into an art dealer who sells the paintings of lesser-known painters. His best-selling talent is Katherine Pierce, a talented twenty-four year old whose ultimate ambition is to become a celebrity, not an artist.

"You can let Katherine go if you paint again." Finn remarks. "There are twenty one buyers on the wait list for your next paintings."

There's a bitter taste left in Klaus' tongue and it isn't from the ristretto. Finn does not understand – it's not like he chooses not to paint anymore, it's just… he can't. He would kill to be able to paint again, but when he looks up at a canvas he feels utterly lost like a polar bear in Africa or Mozart in a techno bar. He can always paint some picture that he doesn't even like and sell it for a fortune to oblivious buyers who will still declare it beautiful, but the artist in him won't let him create another whore-painting like the French landscapes.

But it's vacation time and not a bare-your-vulnerabilities-to-your-brother therapy session so Klaus simply raises a brow.

"May I remind you that the bint can sue me for all I'm worth if I get rid of her anytime in the next three years because you made us sign that pain in the arse exclusivity contract."

"I was merely looking after you." Finn defends for the hundredth time.

Klaus takes another sip from his cup. Never mind. Finn Mikaelson is no longer his lawyer anyway.

-o-

Famous for its servings of the shooter which the club is named after, B-52 is one of the busiest places in Cabo by the time 11pm strikes. Tonight there are about two hundred fifty people in the club, dancing, drinking, having fun and generally making fools out of themselves.

In a VIP corner sits the Scooby Gang, enjoying their third night in Mexico and coincidentally Caroline's 22nd birthday. Okay, it's not so much of a coincidence because Damon planned this trip as his gift slash her birthday celebration. So far it's been absolutely spectacular and not even the trouble in the Beremy paradise has put a damper on the fun. At least that's what everybody says.

In all fairness, Caroline and Damon look very happy indeed. Damon's been extra nice the last three days and now he's even holding Caroline's waist while he whispers something that makes her laugh as they take a break from dancing. He mouths an obvious "I love you" before planting a quick, chaste kiss on her lips. Caroline beams before entwining her arms around his neck.

Bonnie leans into Elena to remark that she's never seen their friends this lovey-dovey before. "Do you think they're serious, like, marriage serious?"

Elena swallows but keeps a smile plastered on her face. _I'm not jealous_, she tells herself, but _Oh Elena everyone knows what a terrible liar you are. _She wishes that Stefan didn't go out of the club to answer that phone call – something to do with work, of course with Stefan everything has something to do with work – so she could at least have someone to occupy herself with.

"Drinks are here!" Caroline squeals. It's their third round of B-52's and Damon's decided to up the ante with a full payload, lit on fire.

Bonnie takes one without needing further encouragement but for some reason the shot glass slips from her hand as she takes it to her lips. The drink spills on her dress and for a split second the CK gradient print has blue flames where the Bacardi spilt; but Jeremy becomes Flash and dabs his coat jacket on Bonnie's lap to kill the flames in about two blinks.

"Oh my God, are you alright Bon?" Caroline asks, rushing to Bonnie's side.

Bonnie's heart is racing but thankfully she has only a wet dress and not a burnt leg to remember this by. "I'm fine, I'm fine." She says, holding her hand up. "I'll… I'll just go to the restrooms and clean up."

"I'll go with you." Jeremy says, standing up before Caroline and Elena can say something.

Damon raises a brow. How the hell is he going to be of any help when he can't even go into the female restrooms? But because Bonnie doesn't say anything to stop him and Caroline and Elena just look at each other, he keeps quiet as well.

It's only when the couple leave that Elena realizes she's left alone with Care and Damon. It's not such a big deal until you learn that two years ago Damon bared his feelings for her but she still chose to be with Stefan because the good guy is what's good for her. When Damon begins dating her best friend she tells herself that she's not hurt, but again with such horrible lying skills she doesn't even fool herself. At the same time, she can't deny that Stefan makes her happy so more than anything, it's confusing.

Elena glances at the rest of the flaming drinks. She, like Caroline, has always been a light drinker, but tonight she might need more than one shot.

She gulps down a B-52 and the party begins.

-o-

In the parking lot outside B-52, Mr. I-Want-Everything-Under-Control aka Stefan presses the end-call button and sighs. He just got off the phone with Alaric who told him that someone broke into his office earlier that night and the police still haven't figured out who broke in, how and why. Great, just great.

He's about to go back inside when he hears a girl scream.

"Get off me!"

Stefan deposits his phone into his jacket's pocket and scans the area. At the far end of the parking lot he sights a girl struggling to get out of a guy's hold.

"Hey!" Stefan shouts at the guy. He rushes to the scene and tries to pry the guy away from the girl.

The guy glares at him. "Leave us alone."

"You're hurting her." Stefan replies without any intention of doing what the guy said.

He doesn't see the punch coming. The next thing he knows, he's lying on the cement clutching his stomach and writhing in pain. A few seconds later Stefan is up and he punches the guy's face. The guy doesn't back down and hits Stefan in return, drawing blood from his nose.

Now Stefan is pissed.

He channels his college football days and tackles the guy down, punching him repeatedly until he's positively certain that the guy's nose is broken beyond repair. He stops hitting only when he realizes that the girl has collapsed on the ground.

Stefan heads towards the girl and tries to help her stand up but she doesn't respond. The guy gets on his feet, takes the chance to run.

"Miss? Miss!" Stefan says, trying to shake the girl awake. She opens her eyes for a few seconds and then blacks out again. Stefan takes his phone out to call 911 but shit he's in Mexico what's 911 in Mexico and even worse his display screen is cracked and the phone won't start, must've broken when the guy punched him –

He sees four guys getting out of the club and waves at them for help. An ambulance arrives twelve minutes later and the paramedics take both the girl and Stefan to the nearest hospital on the account of the girl's unconsciousness and Stefan's bloody nose.

Only when the ambulance is on its way to the ER does Stefan remember the friends he left at B-52.

-o-

"Where the hell is everyone?" Caroline cries, holding a passed-out Elena in her arms.

By 3:15am Caroline's birthday party has turned into a disaster. Stefan has been out for nearly an hour and is not answering his phone, Bonnie and Jeremy are in God-knows-where and Elena has passed out from drinking eight B-52's in a span of twenty minutes, including the drinks that were supposed to be for the MIA trio.

Damon tries to call Stefan for the 55th time but he can't even get a connection. "Wait here, I'll find Stefan."

"No." Caroline refuses, looking worriedly at Elena. "Take her home. I'll find them and we'll go back to the hotel."

"The fuck, I'm not going to leave you –"

"Damon, please. Just take Elena home, she needs it."

-o-

By 4:00am, Caroline wishes that she just spent her birthday in the hotel rather than going out to the club. Stefan was apparently in a hospital with a broken nose after playing white knight to a girl who without him would have been an additional statistic for date rape and couldn't call earlier because his phone was broken. Bonnie and Jeremy had patched things up and Caroline is happy for them but God you'd think they could pause from their kiss and make-up session for five freakin' seconds to answer her call.

When Caroline finally retires back to the suite that she shares with Damon, she is so tired that she has to walk barefoot, her Badgley Mischka heels dangling by the straps in her right hand. The first thing she notices when she enters the lodgings is Damon's phone on the bar counter.

That should explain why he didn't answer when she called him to say that she was on her way back to the hotel.

She is making her way to the bedroom when she hears Damon's voice. It sounds like he's talking to someone, but isn't his phone on the counter?

The door is partly open and Caroline peeps in from outside. Elena appears to be asleep on the bed, all tucked in, while Damon has pulled a chair and is sitting by the bedside… talking to passed-out Elena.

"I don't get it." Damon says, the tips of his fingers meeting together in his lap. "Two years ago I told you that I love you but you said that it's Stefan who's good for you. Now I'm with Barbie and don't even try to deny it, it's killing you."

"But if you don't want me to be with someone else as much as I hate that you're with Stefan, then why do you stay with him? I mean, come on. I love you, you love me. Why does it matter who you met first or who's the better brother? I can give up anything to be with you. Why are you so scared to do the same for me?"

Caroline freezes. Something inside her cracks. Shatters.

Damon runs a hand over his face. "But fine. If you want to stay with Mr. Perfect, it's not like there's anything I can do, right? By the way, he's going to propose to you next year, and of course I'm going to beat him to it. I'm asking your best friend to marry me tomorrow. Then we can spend the rest of our lives tormenting each other."

The shoes drop on the floor.

Damon's heart skips a beat and he immediately stands up to head outside the room where a breathless Caroline stands in front of him.

"Caroline –"

He doesn't even get to ask how long she's been there or if she heard anything because she slaps him in the face before running out of the suite, sobbing.

-o-

Klaus wakes up at dawn. He closes his eyes for a good ten seconds, imagining that he's sixteen, it's July and he's in Berkshire again, riding his favourite steed Achilles alongside his siblings while their mother smiles as she watches them and their father goes over their marks for the past school year which had just arrived by mail.

He opens his eyes again. He's twenty seven, he lives in Chicago now and Achilles is dead. He hasn't spoken to Elijah in over a year, his mother's smiles are mostly helpless now and his father, it turns out, is not really his father.

He glances at the clock by his bedside and sees that it's 05:08am. It's about the usual time he gets out of bed so he decides to head for the breakfast nook and help himself to coffee. He finds his sister there, engaged in a furious staring contest with her laptop screen. Huh. Klaus had been under the impression that this is a vacation but of course trust Ms. Perfectionist to bring her perfectionist habits here.

He makes his coffee as quietly as possible, careful to avoid another 'disturb-Bekah-while-she's-taking-her-Nth-LSAT-prep-test' disaster. Last month Kol had been blamed for a 177 PT score because his protein shake-blending supposedly distracted Rebekah and the bloke was promptly whacked in the head with an aluminum bat. Still, the threat of physical injury does not keep Klaus from making a second cup of coffee and putting it on the table within his sister's reach.

He moves back to his room where on a whim, he opens the glass-panel doors leading to the balcony and watches the sunrise. Daybreak in Cabo is one of the most magnificent views he has seen - the tangerine sun peeking from the gold-blue sky over an indigo sea. As he sips his coffee, his eyes begin traveling the pale white coastline that faintly glistens under the subtle light of dawn.

He stops at a certain part of the shore where he sees a blonde girl sitting on the sand by the water, hugging her knees.

He doesn't know who the girl is or what she's doing there at five thirty in the morning, but there's something poignant about this picture that makes his chest pound and his fingers tingle. His eyes take in the sight intently, etching it in his mind, because he knows that he will want to paint this someday when he can paint again. The scene is brimming with all the emotions missing from those paintings he sold for money and Klaus has no better definition for art than this – it makes one feel.

A mental image is not enough. The coffee is left on the balcony table and Klaus goes back in to take a sketchpad from one of his bags. He returns, ready to draw, prepared to copy every single detail of the picture in front of him.

But then he sees a dark-haired man approach.

The pounding in his chest fades as the entire landscape suddenly changes with the addition of one single element. The guy stands behind the girl for a few moments before he sits down beside her and then kisses her hair.

Klaus drops the charcoal pen. He's done with romance, knows better than to believe in it. This is not something that he wants to draw.

He closes his sketchbook with finality and goes back inside his room.

-o-

"I'm sorry."

Caroline closes her eyes. She tells herself that she has wasted enough of her time, her life – her love – for Damon and she's not going to waste tears for him.

So she hugs her knees closer. Bites her trembling lips. Tries everything to keep the tears from falling.

Fails.

"You play me along for two years and that's all you have to say?"

"Would it matter if I told you that I tried to forget Elena for you?"

"Wow, I'm so lucky."

"You know it, Caroline. Remember every time I've been there for you in the past two years and you'll know that I tried."

"So now I owe you?"

"No, it's just… Goddammit."

She finally turns to Damon. Two hours ago she was convinced that she could spend the rest of her life with him, but now she doesn't even know the man in front of her.

"Did you even mean any of it? Any single one of it?"

He sees the pain that her eyes are still full off and Jesus, he feels sick. He wants to stick a knife into something, preferably himself.

"Everything." Damon answers honestly. "I still do. I tried, Caroline. But I couldn't love you with all of me. I don't have all of me anymore."

He sits down next to her and God she hates him but she's too broken to tell him how much it hurts.

He breathes in the salty scent of the waters before taking out the ring he bought for her. His now-ex girlfriend looks at it for a moment before looking up at him.

Here goes two years worth of lies and twelve thousand dollars, Damon thinks.

He kisses Caroline's hair and then throws the ring into the sea.

-o-

A/N:

1. This story is continued in gratitude of the 21 dear people who cared enough to tell me that I should go on. You guys are the best. :) I wasn't sure how to proceed with the preg plot so for the meantime I did a little timeline rewind. Chappie 3 deals with Klaus finally meeting Caroline and you know what happened because you read the now oddly-placed prologue.

2. The break-up scene is a bit weird because I'm so sorry but… I've never broken up with anyone before. Eeep! I've been with the same guy since freshman year and I'm crossing my fingers that we don't break up anytime soon. :)

So… your thoughts?


	3. Starry Night Over the Rhone

Note: I apologize to those who were confused by the timeline from my last update. To clear it up, the Prologue (Mother by a Cradle) happened in the present time while Chapter 1 (Girl in White) and Chapter 2 (this chapter) go back to the recent past to explain the events leading to the Prologue. Thanks **brighteyescoldheart **(formerly bubbblesmonster) for the reminder!

-o-

Chapter 2

**Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888)**

"_Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

**New York City, where are your girls are pretty**

**All your men are running from somewhere or making a name for themselves**

**Are you looking for something, did you come from nothing**

**Are you testing the Lord with the cards that you've been dealt**

_Two months ago…_

The Distillery is a quaint little bar near his gallery that Klaus frequently goes to when he needs to clear his head over a drink made of liquids other than scotch and water. The bar is neither large nor grand nor popular, but so long as there's no open mic night where somebody wails those 'songs' by… what's his name again, that Canadian teenybopper who bears a disturbingly striking resemblance to Ellen Degeneres?... it's enough for Klaus.

He comes into the bar on Tuesday night after a long day of arguing with Katherine. The bitch wants to do a series of nude paintings and Klaus has no objection to that whatsoever but when she clarifies how she wants to paint these nude paintings he almost gets an aneurysm.

"I want a live exhibit. You can open the gallery to public audience so they can watch me paint. The models will pose nude, I'll paint nude, and the paintings will be up for grabs as soon as they're done." Katherine says while checking her nails, like she's simply chatting with one of her girlfriends.

"You want to have eleven naked people, yourself included, displayed in my gallery for basically anyone to gawk at." Klaus rearticulates. Breathing feels ridiculously difficult right now and vaguely he wonders if his lungs are sucking in the 0.000524% of helium in the atmosphere instead of oxygen.

"It's going to be a hit." The brunette replies. "The publicity will attract a lot of buyers."

"You want a bloody exhibition, not an exhibit."

"Who cares? Sex sells, and the more attention I get, the better for your gallery. It's not like I'm asking you to be one of my nude models."

"Put a sock in it, Katherine. This discussion is not going anywhere."

"Why the hell not? If you want to be one of my models, you should have just -"

See, this is one of the eight thousand four hundred seventy two reasons why he detests Katherine Pierce. She likes attention and the lengths she'll go through to get it are utterly unbelievable. (It's a shame that his gallery is afloat because her paintings actually sell.) Reason number eight thousand four hundred seventy one, she argues like Niecy Nash on crack. The quarrel drags on for more than four hours until someone calls her and she has to go.

"This isn't over, Klaus." Katherine says before she finally leaves. And thankfully too because Klaus has begun to contemplate whether Finn's Cambridge law degree is sufficient reassurance that he would eventually be cleared of homicidal charges in case he lets go of self-control and strangles her.

"Bad day?" Gloria asks as the Mikaelson slips into his seat in front of the bar counter.

Klaus rubs his temples. "You have no idea."

The olive-skinned bartender leaves to mix him his usual Godfather on the rocks when he notices an unfamiliar blonde seated near the end of the bar counter. From his distance he sees only her profile, but strangely he's stricken by this odd feeling that's he's seen her somewhere before. At the same time, he's pretty sure that he doesn't know her.

"Who is she?" he asks Gloria when the later hands him his drink.

"I thought my bar isn't one of your pick-up points." Is the casual answer he gets.

Klaus shrugs. It's not. When he wants a fuck he gets a girl from some other random bar, never at the Distillery. It makes the chances of meeting again relatively slim, precisely the way he wants it.

He looks at her again. This time she glances at his direction and their eyes meet.

You know how supernovas are formed? Something contracts, collapses and compresses; gravity pulls, heat pushes back, something burns hot and fast and faster and faster until there's a massive cosmic explosion that leaves an entire galaxy shaking in its wake.

Inside, it's what Klaus feels. It's not love. It's something insistent, compelling and violent, the same force that makes a moth irresistibly attracted to light.

He stands up and makes his way towards her.

-o-

**Where do you find peace in the middle of the city**

**Hard enough to find a friend when everyone's starting over again**

**I feel like a child in a world that seems shapeless**

**What I am most afraid is when I get sucked back in**

The first day of work after her birthday in Cabo, Caroline hands Stefan her resignation letter. It says things such as "infinitely grateful for the opportunity to work for Salvatore Development", "acquired valuable knowledge of marketing and public relations" and "leaving to move on and pursue other career objectives in the interest of professional development."

Stefan promptly feeds the letter to the shredder.

"You're not with the company because you were his girlfriend." He tells her softly, eyes kind. "And you shouldn't leave just because you're no longer together."

Caroline bites her lip. Oh, if Stefan knew what was happening, he would scream at Damon to leave.

"Please, Care. You don't have to work for my brother. Report to me instead. Just… just stay."

And because Stefan will always be the brother that she never had, she ends up staying.

She does not talk to Damon for the next eight weeks, doesn't look at him even once. Nobody has the guts to ask what led to the fall-out – that is, nobody except Elena.

"Did he hurt you? Did he cheat on you? Oh, Care…"

And Caroline has to fake a smile and say that she's over Damon and she doesn't want to talk about it anymore. Elena is kind, too kind, and Caroline will never ever be able to tell her that "We're over because he loves you, not me."

But then something happens. It's a gray, cloudy day when Giuseppe Salvatore feels a numbing pain in his chest as he drinks his three o'clock coffee in the President's office, and in a split second everything changes forever. When his secretary enters his office fifteen minutes later, the Salvatore patriarch has succumbed to cardiac arrest and no amount of CPR or electric shock from a defibrillator can bring him back.

Stefan goes with the ambulance that brings his father's body to the hospital. Elena is by his side, holding his hand and never once letting it go. To Caroline, this only means that in his twentieth floor office, Damon Salvatore is by himself, grappling with the conflicting emotions that his father's death stirs in his chest.

She enters Damon's room for the first time in two months. He's crumpled on the couch, eyes blank, glass of scotch in hand and an almost empty bottle of Macallan by the table.

She doesn't say anything, keeps her eyes on the floor for the first ten seconds.

And then… she embraces him.

She puts her arms around him and for a moment everything is Daroline and nothing hurts. She remembers the comforting way that Damon held her when her own father died two years ago and she can't deny the fact that she made it through because someone was there for her, and that someone was Damon.

It's that exact point in time when she finally realizes that what he told her in Cabo is true. He tried. He had been there for her for the past two years because he tried to love her as much as she loved him - he just couldn't do it because there are some things in this world that are not meant to be.

Damon eases his head into Caroline's shoulder. He doesn't cry – he's Damon fucking Salvatore, for Christ's sake, and Damon fucking Salvatore does not cry, especially not for the death of that bitter old cow who unfortunately is his father – but his chest rises and falls in an uneven rhythm and Caroline knows what it means.

She also knows deep in her heart that even though she will never forget what Damon did to her, she has forgiven him.

Everything is well for the next couple of months until one morning Damon strolls into the ground floor cafe for their usual breakfast and he finds Caroline there in a miserable state of dejection.

"So…" he says, plopping down a seat.

Caroline looks at him glumly, stabbing a cinnamon roll with her fork. "Brady cheated on me."

"Hm."

"Hm? Brady cheats on me and all you can say is hm?"

Damon rolls his eyes. "Fine, who did he cheat with?"

"I don't know, some cheerleader named Jules. It's all over the internet. Listen to this." She reads an article on her phone from an online entertainment site. "Bears QB caught in smoochfest with Saints cheerleader two hours after dinner with girlfriend."

"She's a Saints cheerleader? Those girls are hot."

Caroline doesn't even pay attention to the comment. "I just don't get it. We were okay. Everything was okay. Why did he cheat on me? And barely two hours after he took me out to dinner!"

"Oh, Barbie." Damon sighs dramatically. "You wouldn't sleep with him. You were so not okay."

"What?"

"The guy's an NFL player. He's good looking, he's rich and he's popular. Do you have any idea how many girls throw themselves at his feet? And then his girl won't bang him because of this weird need for an emotional connection blah blah."

"But we've only been going out for three months –"

"The point is, he's a pro athlete with testosterone levels higher than his salary cap and you wouldn't sleep with him. Even if you really like him and he really likes you, your story has no other ending but either breaking up or cheating."

Caroline's face falls like she just found out that production of curling irons worldwide has stopped. "Is it wrong to want to be in love with the guy I do it with?"

Damon shrugs again. "I don't know how to answer that. But I'm going to tell you that the first year we were together and you wouldn't have sex with me until, in your words, you were in love with me with your body and mind and heart – Christ that is so soppy by the way –fuck, it almost drove me insane. And until now I honestly don't know how on earth I got through that."

"Well you obviously made up for it our second year." Caroline said grudgingly. Damon was worse than a rutting stag – oh, if the board of directors knew what that table in the conference room had gone through, they would never hold another meeting in there again. Ever.

"You know what I think you should do? Get over that I-have-to-have-feelings-for-the-men-I-sleep-with crap and just enjoy sex for what it is."

The blonde frowns. As Damon had so eloquently pointed out, she's not really the casual sex kind of girl.

"Christ, Caroline. Just go to some random bar, flirt with some good-looking guy and have casual, recreational, no strings attached rebound sex."

She bites into a cinnamon roll and mulls over Damon's suggestion.

-o-

**It must be hard to live in the midst of all those buildings**

**Where the changing of the wind don't seem a miracle at all**

**And by the hands of man it's a maze of bad habits**

**Where the rabbit in the hat is just a train in the fog**

"Forgive me for the candor, love, but you seem awfully familiar – have we been introduced before?"

She looks up at him and immediately Klaus is seized by her eyes. There isn't an exact word to describe the ambivalent shade of blue-green or green-blue that they take, but the clarity that glasses her orbs is anything but indistinct. They speak to him like the stars speak to Van Gogh, sweet whispers like feathered kisses upon his tapered fingers, making him want to grab a brush and just start painting. She's like a Mediterranean morning after an Arabian night and hell, he doesn't even know what he's talking about.

"I don't think so…" she says, partly coy, partly hesitant. That a pick-up line... wasn't it? The alcohol buzz from her third Esmeralda isn't helping her decide.

_Well he's really cute and his accent is really hot…_

His eyes narrow for a moment before he nods slowly in acceptance of her answer. "I thought… never mind."

She can't believe it when he starts to turn around. Is he walking away? Isn't he into her? Did she just get… uh, turned down?

"Maybe we can get introduced now." The words come out before she can even think about it.

_Oh no Caroline what are you doing?_

He turns back to her and she bites inside her mouth so she won't say anything even more stupid. But to him, her eyes are doing all the talking.

_Stay._

He breathes out deeply and manages a small smile before slipping on the seat next to her.

"I'm… Nina." She says, returning the smile.

He resists the urge to laugh. He didn't miss that pause before she said 'Nina' and if that wasn't enough, she was wearing a pretty little silver necklace that has a 'C' pendant. He highly doubts that she spells her name 'Cnina' with a silent C.

"Nicholas." _Is the English equivalent of my name, and two can play this game._ "Allow me to buy you a drink, love?"

She tells him that she's a regular corporate skirt downtown and he tells her that he's a horse trainer from England. (In all fairness, if art wasn't in his life he would honestly be working with horses.)

"Horse trainer, like for races?"

"More for equestrian."

"You mean like Anne Romney's horse?"

She cringes before she's even done saying 'Anne Romney'. _Way to get laid, Caroline, gush about the Romneys. What if he's staunchly Democrat? _She mentally smacks herself, forgetting in the midst of embarrassment that British people don't vote in American elections.

She shakes her head sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I don't really know a lot about horses. The last guy I dated - the only horses he cared about were Mustangs. The ones that came from Ford with a sixty grand price tag."

"Then why are we talking about him?" he says with amusement.

She laughs. "I'll drink to that if you do."

The drink turns to two, and then three, and after five he loses count. They talk and he makes her laugh and often she does that to him too, but amidst listening to her voice he mostly gazes at her eyes. Inside his head he's already deciding what pigments to blend to arrive at that precise same shade of blue-green. He doesn't even notice that a good five hours has passed until Gloria pulls him aside and tells him that it's fifteen minutes to the 1am closing time.

"Are you taking her back to your place?" she asks.

Klaus kind of reels. "I am not relegating myself into the rebound guy she's looking for, thank you very much. I'll get her a cab."

"Look, honey, the only thing I care about is not having a drunk blonde who can't get home when I close shop in fifteen minutes, and she's starting to look tipsy. Can you get her that cab now?"

"Are you kicking us out?"

"No, I'm asking you to do something that might even be consider chivalrous. Get her home."

He shrugs as he goes back to his blonde drinking-mate. He looks at her for a good ten seconds to etch the color of her eyes in his mind (he won't ask to take a bloody picture, no he won't) before he tells her that the bar is about to close, may I help you get a cab.

For a moment Caroline wants to scream – did she really just spend the entire night with a guy who's turning her down? – but after the split-second heartache she feels relieved and smiles at him genuinely. Sour graping aside, maybe this is the universe's way of telling her that sleeping with someone she doesn't have feelings for just for the sake of revenge isn't something that she has to do.

He leads her out of the bar and walks her down the street where he can hail a cab. She assures him all the way that she can manage on her own and there's no need for him to accompany her but he does it anyway. When he sees that she's shivering from the cold fall wind despite the peplum blazer that she's wearing, he even puts his own leather jacket over her shoulders.

When a cab finally arrives, she smiles at him gratefully and he looks at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Thanks…" she says softly. "See you around?"

He nods, and he doesn't know why this is so much more difficult than it needs to be.

But then –

She stands on her toes and leans in to give him a peck in the cheek. He knows what she's trying to do and for some dumb and probably drunken reason, he purposefully turns his head so the kiss lands on his lips instead.

It burns.

Her arms tangle themselves around his neck almost the same time his hands find their way around her waist. She kisses him like she's going to die tomorrow and he willingly obliges her because he's really just relieved that she didn't break away and slap him after what he did. His fingers lace through her silky blonde hair as he draws her even closer, igniting a ravenous blaze of desperate, restless need through both of their bodies.

When they finally pull away from each other for the want of breath, he looks at her and then at the cab. "You should… get going."

"Right, totally." Caroline agrees, panting. She must really be drunk.

She gets inside the cab and he follows.

He doesn't know how they made it through the cab ride and the walk to his apartment but by the time they get into his room the only thing she has on is a lacy purple number and he is as near to being stark naked himself. She lands with a squeak on his slate blue sheets and suddenly he no longer cares whether he's a rebound guy or whatever. All that matters is the glorious feel of her body against his as he presses himself on top of her.

He raises his head to level with her eyes and he loves the strength and the helplessness and the lust and the innocence that he sees all swimming together in the cerulean surface.

"See anything you like?" she says suggestively as he gazes at her.

_Where am I even getting the nerve to say these things?_

His blue eyes rake down the supple body beneath his sinewy frame and he leers appreciatively. She is exquisitely beautiful and he doesn't need to be an artist to say that.

"Much." He says before bringing his lips into hers again, so deep and almost bruising that when she disengages from the kiss her lips flush into a lovely shade of amaranth.

"But you haven't seen anything yet." She tells him, and with that her arms leave his neck briefly to undo the clasp of her bra.

Lord, what the hell was he thinking when he told Gloria that he's not going to bang this girl?

He wastes not a second longer but allows her collarbone a faint lick before traveling downward and letting his stubbled jaw graze the valley between her breasts. She groans in a blend of pleasure and frustration, the earlier because he feels too fucking good against her skin and the later because he's not touching her in the places where she needs him to.

Her hands fist into his ash blonde locks, guiding his mouth towards the peaks of her breasts, but he growls and pries her hands away to pin them to either side of her head.

"Patience, love." He drawls, though he can hardly control himself as well.

He dips his head low into her chest and finally gives her what she wants. An electric jolt surges throughout her body as his tongue swirls around her, and he smirks as her head rolls back when he bites her gently. He takes his time licking, lapping and luxuriating in her, loving every breathless moan and every needy mewl that he elicits from her. Hell, he hasn't even started actually fucking her.

He lets her hands go and gives her a few minutes to catch her breath because she is going to need it when he moves in to rack more pleasure into her. In the mean time he takes in the flushness of her now sweat-damped skin, the way her bare chest rises and falls rapidly as she breathes - and he can't help but be pleased at the state that he reduced her into.

He decides then and there that he wants this - he _needs_ this.

Opening her eyes, she beckons him to come closer and draws him again into her sweet, sweet mouth, kissing him fervently as she arches her body closer to his to create that deliciously maddening friction. But he pulls back because she closes her eyes when he kisses her and he wants to see – he has to see – those orbs when he brings her into abandon.

He reaches for his wallet, where he has a ready condom in one of the folds. It should be on the bedside table – except that it's not.

Shit. He must have left it in the bar.

She reads through the spike of auburn annoyance in his sky blue eyes and smiles as she soothes him with soft kisses along his jaw, ending by the shell of his ear.

"It's okay. I'm on the pill." She whispers.

He doesn't need to hear it twice.

When she wakes up the next morning, she is alone in bed and she feels sick as hell. She groans hoarsely, burying her head in the slate blue pillows –

_Why are my pillows blue?_

- and almost chokes at the realization that she is not in her room.

_Oh my God._

She pulls herself together despite the massive headache and forces herself to get up from bed. The digital clock on the bedside table says 6:38am and she cringes – she has to get the hell out of there. Thankfully Nicholas – if that's even his real name - is nowhere to be found and she assumes that he made himself scarce so she could make a not-so-awkward getaway, which is precisely what she plans to do.

She picks her clothes up from the floor, wearing them as fast as possible, but she can't for the life of her find her top. Her head is already pounding and she feels like she might throw up anytime so she forgets about the top and proceeds to wear a gray Henley strewn on the floor.

She walks out of the room as quietly as she could. She makes it to the living room and she's just a few feet away from the door when she hears footsteps coming.

_Oh no._

She ducks behind the couch and squeezes her eyes shut. The footsteps grow nearer and nearer… until they pass and soon fade. She hears the sound of a door opening and then closing. After that she hears none more.

She stands up and literally runs to the door.

-o-

**Now if you leave, will you feel defeated?**

**Cause you didn't take from the city as much as the city took from you**

**What if you'd stayed, what if you'd done what you were thinking **

**I'd rather you give up on life in the city than giving up on life too**

Kol trudges down the apartment hallway looking royally pissed as he types a sarcastic "Haha. Very funny." message on his phone, addressed to none other than his detestably diabolical sister. Last week Bekah learned that Kol was boning Aimee Bradley- well he could hardly remember that her name was Aimee and he doesn't bother to ask what the last names of his fuck buddies are, how the hell is he supposed to know that she's Rebekah's college arch-nemesis?

Bex of course does not listen to Kol's explanation and promptly vows to make his life a living hell until he stops seeing Amy (which is kind of difficult because damn that girl can give a head). Today Kol woke up to a refrigerator that is, to his horror, stuffed close to bursting with one hundred freakin' cartons of commercial whole milk. Even worse is the fact that though he had torn the entire apartment up and down, he could not find his precious single carton of lactose-free organic skimmed milk.

He heads to his brother's place across the hall knowing that Nik drinks 2%milk (it's not the same but it's better than whole milk, ugh the calories.). He's about to press the doorbell when the door suddenly opens.

Kol's lower jaw unhinges itself in a manner reminiscent of a dim-witted chimpanzee. Standing in front of him is a gorgeous blonde who, despite obviously being hammered senseless, still manages to look incredibly – the fuck, is that Klaus' Henley that she's wearing?

He blinks thrice and looks blankly at the girl, who for her part has begun to blush.

"Hi... I, uh, ran out of... milk." Kol finishes lamely, still unable to gather his wits. "Is..." _Shit what name did Klaus introduce himself as to this girl? _"Uh, is... my neighbor in there?"

The blonde bites her lip and worriedly looks back at the apartment she is leaving. "Um yeah, he's... I'm sorry, I can't do this right now."

She brushes past Kol and hurriedly makes her way to the elevator.

Kol just stands by the doorway like a dork for ten seconds before he finally enters his brother's apartment. He walks straight into Nik's room where he finds the latter laying on the bed, eyes closed.

"I met your fuck buddy on her way out." Kol says.

Klaus doesn't budge. It was rebound sex. Of course she'd be gone in the morning.

"And what do you know, she's blonde! That's a first for you."

The older Mikaelson opens his eyes at his brother's declaration. He's about to ask Kol what the hell he means when he suddenly realizes that until last night every woman he's gone to bed with since leaving England is indeed a brunette with hazel doe eyes.

_Just like Tatia._

(He doesn't know what's more disturbing – the fact that he had been sleeping with women who all look like the Petrova heiress or that Kol keeps tab on his sex life.)

"So is this gonna be a regular kind of thing since you gave her your shirt and stuff?" Kol asks.

"Shirt? I gave who what shirt?"

"You didn't give her the shirt you were wearing yesterday?"

"No. Why the hell would I give anyone my shirt?"

"I don't know. But that was what she was wearing when she left."

"...?"

"Shit, Nik. She stole your shirt."

-o-

**Follow your dreams but beware of the illusions**

**You won't feel the void in your heart with the bank statement and the car**

**What is it worth, what is it worth, have you given up on freedom?**

**You spent your life working for keys to set you free when you were free all along**

It's seven in the morning when Damon is awakened by lithe fingers tracing circles on his bare chest. He gets to yawn once before a smirking Andie Star devours his lips, morning breath and all. He gamely lets her roll on top of him as he kisses her back, but his mind is already wandering to the same image that he thinks of every day when he wakes up – another brunette with soft brown eyes and pale pink lips, who lights up the world when she smiles.

His phone suddenly rings. Instead of disengaging himself from the lip lock, Damon simply lets his right hand fumble around the bedside table until he finally grasps the gadget. He looks at it for a second and then gently pushes Andie away because the display screen has the word "Caroline" on it.

"Hey." Damon says as he puts the phone to his ear. Andie proceeds to nip at his nape but he frowns and motions for her to give him space.

"Oh God, Damon, where are you I'm going to die I feel so sick I don't even know where I -"

"Hey, hey, calm down. What happened? Where are you?"

"I told you, I don't know! My head hurts so bad and I just got out of there and started walking away and I don't know-"

"Got out of where... Fuck, Caroline, did you hitch and ditch last night?"

"That's what you told me to do, didn't you?"

Damon groans. "You should've told me so I could've... Never mind. Where are you, I'll come and take you home."

"I don't know... Just... ugh, my head hurts -"

"What do you see around you? There's got to be a landmark or a restaurant or some kind of store..."

"There's this cafe nearby... Lumiere?"

The raven-haired Salvatore quickly opens his laptop and googles the cafe's location. "Christ, you're in Lennox. Of all the men in the world, why the hell did you have to bone a guy who lives in Lennox?"

"I don't know, I don't know, oh God Damon…"

"I'll be there in thirty minutes, just wait for me, okay?"

As soon as Caroline hangs up Damon is reaching for his clothes and his car keys. Andie looks at him with a resigned expression on her face before sighing.

"Caroline again?" she asks, bothering to mask neither her anger nor her hurt.

Damon avoids her eyes. "What do you mean 'again'?"

"I'm your girlfriend, you know."

"Yes, this is my apartment you're in and that is my bed you're on, isn't it?"

Andie shakes her head. She's had enough, can't take any more of this heartbroken frustration - but for one last time, she tries. "I know you two have been through a lot and she's your best friend and everything... but I can't do this anymore, Damon. It's me or her."

Damon doesn't answer. He's sorry for Andie but… he can't even choose her over Caroline, what more over the girl who really matters?

He slips his shoes on and then leaves the room without another word.

An hour later he's carrying a very hung over Caroline Forbes into her bed in her apartment. He makes her take a glass of Alka Seltzer solution while he gently berates her about what she did last night ("I could have gone with you to the bar and taught you the tricks of the trade.") before tucking her in like a good little girl. Except that no good little girl gets lost in Lennox with a massive hang over after a one night stand. (He can't resist quietly taking a picture of the hammered blonde before he gets up though – he seriously plans to hold this over her head for the rest of their lives.)

He's about to get out of her room when he hears her call for him.

"Damon?"

He goes back, sits at the end of her bed. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"You totally owe me, Blondie. Big time."

Caroline knows that tone so even though her head is pounding she opens her eyes to look at him. "Fine, what do you want?"

"Can I crash on your couch? I don't feel like going to work today either."

Upon Damon's mention of the word 'work' the blonde immediately sits up and frantically tries to get out of bed. "Oh no, work, I have to submit a report to -"

"Chill. Your boss is on leave today." Damon assures her.

"Oh." the blonde blinks, calming down. "Right. It's your first month anniversary or something."

_First month anniversary? _Damon swallows. He totally forgot.

"Yeah, about that... Andie and I kind of broke up."

"What? When? Why?"

"This morning. That's why I wanted to crash on your couch. I just want to sleep it off for a couple of hours."

Caroline says nothing. She closes her eyes and moves over so the other side of the bed is free. Damon quietly slips beside her, keeping his hands to himself, because he knows exactly where the two of them stand.

It does not take long before both of them are peacefully asleep.

**You came here with nothing, you're leaving with the same**

**Sometimes the road that you are walking on is going the wrong way**

**Just come as you are, when you leave you will be changed**

**Everyday is a gift, everyday is a gift and it's all slipping away.**

_-New York City, Among Savages_

-o-

A/N:

1. Sorry everyone for the late update! I am working on three stories right now and I am still enslaved to my GPA so things are quite hectic.

2. We will be back to the present time in the next chapter, where a Klaroline confrontation is due. Lately I've been bugged by this crazy idea of Caroline moving in with Klaus... with Damon tagging along (just to annoy Klaus). Haha I can't imagine Damon and Klaus living in one roof. Can you?

3. Congratulations to the Klaroline Awards 2012 winners! I came up second in Best Debut Fic and third in Most Creative Author, but the nominations and votes really made me feel so loved. Thank you so much everyone, you inspire me all to keep writing! :)

Now please excuse me I have to start writing the next chapter of Solstice.


	4. Poet's Garden with a Couple

Note: This chapter is dedicated to **jomomayheart**. Belated happy birthday, dearest, and thank you for being such a wonderful friend! :)

* * *

Chapter 3

**Poet's Garden with a Couple (1888)**

"_For great things do not just happen by impulse, but are a succession of small things linked together."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

Sometimes Damon Salvatore feels like there's something catastrophically wrong with the world that he lives in.

Why are there nations that continue to develop nuclear weaponry when it is a universal fact that the existence of such technology poses a critical threat against the global community?

Why did only one person recognize the beauty of Van Gogh's paintings when he was alive, and why did the world realize the man's brilliance only after his death?

Why are they plucking Joseph Morgan out of The Vampire Diaries when the sexual tension between him and Candice Accola is the only thing that makes the show worth watching anyway?

Most importantly, why is he spending what should be working hours in his office arguing with Caroline Forbes while she munches on... (Damon shudders) _pickles with Nutella_?

"What do you mean you don't remember where he lives?"

"I mean I don't remember where he lives. We got there in a cab, I was kinda drunk, when I woke up the next morning I thought I was going to die from the hangover and I panicked because I didn't want him to see that I was still there so I just ran out and away. I'm not even sure how long I'd been walking when I called you."

Damon controls the urge to face palm. "So you're telling me that the only thing you know is that his name is Nicholas. You don't have a last name and you can't remember where he lives."

"That's pretty much it."

"And there's the ninety nine point ninety nine percent chance that his name isn't even Nicholas."

"Do you happen to have some peanut butter stashed around here? I feel like pickles and peanut butter would be awesome right now."

"Can we forget the pickles for a second and focus on finding this guy instead?" Damon says seriously.

Caroline sighs as she puts the pickle down. "Damon, I'm really thankful that you've been here for me through all of this and I appreciate everything you're doing, but honestly... I'm not even sure if I really want to find him."

"Why on earth wouldn't you want to find your kid's dad?"

"Because I'm scared." The blonde admits, her voice breaking. "What if we find him and he doesn't want the baby? What if he has a girlfriend? God, what if he's married? I don't want to find out that I ruined a family!"

"If he's married and he slept with you then he's the one who -"

"It's just – I don't want to risk finding out something that I might regret. I'll just do this on my own if I have to."

Damon rolls his eyes. "Oh please. You can't even tell your mom that you're pregnant."

"I can tell her and I will tell her." Caroline insists firmly. Then she bites her lip. "I just need time to figure out how to explain to her that I don't know who the baby's father is and that he's likely never going to be in the picture."

"That's exactly my point. It might be better for you not to know this guy, but it's not the same way with Blondie Junior. As long as this fucking company is making money I swear your kid will have everything, but all the money in the world won't buy us an answer when your kid asks why other kids have dads -"

And before he knows it Caroline bounces next to him in the couch and he's being crushed in a bear hug. She can't even put into words how grateful she is that he cares for her enough to already be thinking about her kid's future.

Damon wouldn't have minded the hug at all if it weren't for the fact that one tenth of a second later the door suddenly opened and in came...

Ms. Elena Sommers Gilbert soon to be Mrs. Elena Gilbert Salvatore.

The brunette's eyes widen at the sight of her fiance's brother (and one-time suitor) in a tight embrace with her best friend (and his ex-girlfriend). Elena cringes like she just got photographed in an Ann Hathaway-esque situation and wants to disappear from the face of the earth, but she knows that scurrying away from them will just make things awkward so instead she clears her throat and tries to act like nothing happened.

"Sorry, your secretary wasn't in her desk so I just... I'll come back, er, some other time."

"No, no, it's okay!" Caroline squawks frantically as she hastily distances herself from Damon. "We were just... "

Elena is doing her best to be understanding, but it gets even worse when she sees the pickles and Nutella on the table, at which point her jaw drops and no amount of willpower can make her stop gaping.

"I'll... I'll talk to you later." she says and gets out before anything else could be said.

Caroline looks completely petrified. "I am so sorry! I didn't mean to..."

"It's fine." Damon answers, but he's rubbing his temples himself as if foreseeing an awful case of migraine probably ten seconds from now. Elena had never dropped by his office before, and of all the times she could've picked to do it for the first time, it had to be at that time and at that situation.

Whatever happened to knocking on the door before entering?

_Ring! Ring!_

Hands still on his temples, Damon stands up and walks to his table to answer the phone. The caller ID indicates his secretary's number.

"Yes, Charlotte?"

"Mr. Salvatore, your three o'clock is here."

Of course, when it's Elena who wants to see Damon his secretary is nowhere to be found, but now that it's _not_ Elena who wants to see him, she's miraculously back in her desk.

"Fine, send him in."

Damon breathes out to compose himself before turning back to Caroline, who has already gotten up from the couch. "Be here at five thirty. After dinner we're going to Lennox to try to retrace your steps."

"Damon –"

"No buts, Blondie. I don't care if we have to knock on every fucking door in Chicago – we're going to find this Nicholas guy. Now if you'll excuse yourself, I have a meeting."

Caroline rolls her eyes, deciding that she's just going to talk Damon out of it during dinner. She strides to the door and grips the knob just as someone knocks from the other side.

She opens the door and is greeted by Damon's three o'clock. Her eyes widen in shock.

"Klaus." Damon calls out from his desk. That morning he got a call from his elevator-stuckmate (he makes a mental note to ask Klaus where the hell he got Damon's number) saying there was something important that he had to ask Damon about, _I need to meet you in private as soon as possible_.

"N-nicholas?" Caroline stutters.

Klaus looks at Caroline. His relief at seeing her again is indescribable, but soon he realizes that he honestly, genuinely, sincerely doesn't know what to say so…well he doesn't say anything.

Damon frowns, walking towards them. "Wait, did she just call you Nicholas?"

"Damon…" Caroline says quietly.

"Are you the same Nicholas guy who knocked her up?" Damon demands with the ferocity of Teresa Giudice in all her table-flipping Real Housewives of Whatever glory.

Klaus closes his eyes and exhales for a second, asking the heavens how on earth his life came to this godforsaken moment before he turns back to Caroline.

"That's what I came here for, love. Are you…"

Cue 'that awkward moment'.

-o-

"Okay, first of all, _please_ tell me that you're not married."

Klaus looks at Caroline like he's positively convinced she's gone bonkers. Literally thirty seconds ago, Damon miraculously agreed to give them a moment of privacy to talk things out and vacated his office in favor of finding Elena. Klaus' magnificent ass had barely touched the leather upholstery of Damon's couch when Caroline fired the question.

The blonde is still nervously waiting for his answer so he lifts his left hand to show her his ringless finger. "I'm not married."

"Girlfriend?"

"No girlfriend."

"Ugh, thank God!"

It's Klaus' turn to ask. "So… it's mine?"

"I wish I didn't have to tell you this and I understand if you don't believe me. I was on the pill but I had to take antibiotics for a dental thing and I had no idea that antibiotics cancel pills out."

"And there was no one else…?"

Caroline looks uncomfortable. "Look, what happened to us… that wasn't me. I've never done it casually before. I went through a frustrating break-up and Damon said something about rebound sex and I don't even know why I went for it. It turned out to be so terrible and I didn't do it again after."

Klaus blinks. Did she just say he was terrible? In bed?

"Oh no, I didn't mean it that way!" Caroline gushes, her eyes widening at the realization of how awful it all came out. "You were totally amazing and I enjoyed every minute of it but I'm the 'emotional connection' kind of girl so…"

"Never mind the other details, love. I just want to hear it from you and I won't need anything else. You're positively certain that it's mine?"

"It's yours."

There's the subtlest twitch in Klaus' eyebrow. He tries to act all calm and composed, but the only thought that his mind can rationally grasp is _Shit_.

Don't get him wrong. He's grateful for the gift painting that Caroline somehow allowed him again (although he hasn't finished her painting) and sure there might be a reason why she came into his life blah blah whatever he's fine with all that. But a kid, who years from now will have to be told that he or she is the unfortunate result of his or her mother's fail experimentation with casual sex and his or her father's alcohol-driven reckless horniness?

_Shit._

"So… what do you want to do about this?" Caroline asks hesitantly.

Klaus takes a moment to clear his throat. "I need to call my lawyer. I suggest you call yours too, love, we need to arrange a meeting with our legal counsels as soon as possible."

"Just so we're on the same page, what exactly should I be telling my lawyer?"

"That we are having a child and we want to draw a mutually amenable arrangement regarding custody and support."

Caroline's jaw drops. "Wait, are you telling me that you want to be around for this?"

"'Want' is a strong word, sweetheart." Klaus tells her honestly. "I'd prefer you understood that I'm doing this for the egotistically-driven motivation that I can't neglect my own blood. I'd take everything back if I could and I'm certain you'd do the same, but it's a bit late for that now, isn't it?"

She nods slowly, fully understanding what he's saying. _I'm standing by you but I'm doing this for my kid. _Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, at least her there won't be a 'why don't I have a daddy' problem like Damon had worried about. And maybe somewhere along the way she could ask Klaus to pretend that they were together for a while just so she wouldn't have to tell her mom that she got knocked up from a freakin' one night stand.

"I just have one question." Caroline suddenly says.

"By all means, love."

"Um, so what's your name?"

Klaus closes his eyes tiredly. They're having a kid, for Christ's sake, and they don't even know each other's names.

Why, Lord, why.

"Niklaus Mikaelson. Call me Klaus."

-o-

While the four Mikaelson siblings currently residing Chicago actually do hang out together often, it's a rarity for Klaus to be the one to initiate the bonding time. And since Finn made him sign a five-year exclusivity contract with Katherine Pierce, (it was to secure Klaus' main source of income, how the hell was Finn supposed to know that Klaus and Katherine would end up getting along like Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell?) it's even been rarer for Klaus to approach him about legal stuff again.

So when Klaus aks Finn to join him for a drink at the Distillery where he tells his brother that he wants to make a will, Finn is slightly surprised, somewhat confused and _super_ worried.

"I can draft it for you, of course." Finn answers. "I have to ask though - why?"

Klaus wordlessly takes another swig of gin and tonic.

"Are you in trouble? Did you get on some mob's bad side? Were you diagnosed with some incurable disease or -"

"I knocked a girl up."

The older Mikaelson spews out his scotch.

"Forgive me for being surprised," Finn utters apologetically, wiping his mouth. "I wasn't aware that you were with someone."

_Well considering what you looked like after your split with Tatia, I didn't think you'd ever be with someone again._

Klaus exhales - the 'whacked' kind of exhale that makes him look like he's forty and not twenty seven. "I'm not with anyone, Finn. It's…damn it, I screwed up a one night stand."

Finn's eyes widen. "Are you certain that it's yours?" he asks, his barrister brain immediately going into defensive mode. "What if the girl's just trying to pass it off as your kid? Wait, are you even sure that there's actually a kid and not just some bint off her trolley who wants to keep seeing you? We can take her to Sage to –"

"She's already been to Sage, that's how I found her. She went for a check up at Rainey-Harper and by sheer coincidence got referred to your girlfriend. She didn't even look for me. I had to track her down from the information sheet that she filled up at the hospital."

"Have you had a paternity test done?"

"No. She's six weeks along and Sage says the tests are safer around the tenth week. But I can feel it in my gut. It's mine."

Attorney Mikaelson stops the questions, noting the conviction in his brother's voice. Klaus is anything but gullible, so if he's convinced, then there's a pretty big chance that it's the truth.

"So you want to draft a will that will provide for the child."

Klaus nods slowly. "I want them to have everything. My paintings, any royalties coming off Achilles, my share in the Rath estate."

"And by 'them' you mean you want me to include your child's mother?"

"Yes. But I'm appointing you executor of my estate and your written approval will be required for every single cent that comes out of it. Can you get the draft prepared next week?"

"You know, we don't have to do this until we're sure that the child is yours." Finn advises, but Klaus only shakes his head.

"I can't risk waiting for the tenth week, Finn. I can't not take care of that child. He's all I have."

A mix of guilt, hurt and pity burns at the back of Finn's throat as he hears his brother's words.

_He's all I have._

He wants to tell Klaus that it's not true, that child isn't all he has because he has Finn, he has Kol and Bekah, he has his _family, he will always have his family_ - but he knows that Klaus won't believe him. No matter how many times Elijah has told them that brotherhood means more than the same blood running in two men's veins, it's still a curse that persistently haunts every single one of them, a tragedy that all of them suffer. From a man who tries to reclaim the glory of his forefathers' name, to a woman who tries to protect her family's cross-sworn honor, to two brothers whose only faults are that they fell in love with the same woman and that they would rather hurt themselves than hurt each other.

Finn looks at Klaus, humanity swimming to the surface of his brown eyes as he decides that what Klaus needs right now is a brother, not a lawyer.

"Very well, then. I'll have the draft prepared for your review this week."

-o-

The meeting with their lawyers is set at 8am Friday at a conference room in the SDC building, so when Klaus's phone rings at 6am and the display screen says 'Damon Salvatore', he gets a nagging feeling that it's not about good news.

"Can we reschedule tomorrow or some other day?" Damon says. He sounds anxious. "Caroline just called. She's been sick all morning."

The anxiety turns contagious and Klaus' brows furrow in alarm. The last time he spoke to Caroline she assured him that everything was okay, no violent nausea ala Kate Middleton or bouts with depression like Brooke Shields. He had hoped that things would go smoothly until she came full term, so of course he gets a bite in the ass courtesy of reality. Is there even such a thing as an easy pregnancy?

"Does she need to be taken to the hospital?"

"I'm not yet sure, I'm on my way to her apartment. She said she started throwing up an hour ago and it hasn't been better since."

He tells himself not to worry - morning sickness is common to pregnant women, right? – but his head is already swimming with thoughts about anything and everything that could go wrong with Caroline.

And if something happens to Caroline, it happens to his kid too.

"Give me her address." He finds himself telling Damon.

The Downtown Rosewood apartment turns out to be a full hour's drive from Klaus' flat in Lennox, and he swears that it's the longest sixty minutes of his life. He calls Sage on the way and asks if she can go to Caroline's to see her, but unluckily for him Sage has a patient going into labor and can't leave Rainey-Harper. Klaus gets even more uneasy and relief comes only when he finally gets to Caroline's apartment.

And then Damon calls again.

"I'm literally at the front door." Klaus says the moment he answers. "Mind letting me in?"

"You're there? Good. There's been in accident at Main Avenue and it's holding the traffic up. I've been stuck for half an hour and it doesn't look like I'll be out of here anytime soon."

"Fine, I'll just ring the bell then."

"Wait, the code's 2-0-1-2-2-2-5." Damon blurts out before Klaus hits the end call button.

Klaus frowns into his phone. "What?"

"The code for the digital door lock."

"Digital door lock?"

"Don't you Brits have those in England? Never mind. Look for a box by the door and then punch in the numbers –"

"I know what a digital door lock is. I mean why are you giving me the code to her apartment's door lock?"

"Because she's sick and I don't think you should make her get up to open the door for you, genius. Let yourself in."

…

"Are you telling me that she's _pregnant_ and she's living _alone_?"

"Well, her former room mate moved out a month ago so yeah, she pretty much lives alone." Damon replies sarcastically. "And I'm fucking warning you, Mikaelson, if you upset her while I'm not there, I will kill you, do you understand? I will kill you."

Klaus groans. How the bloody hell did he get himself into this.

-o-

"Caroline?"

Caroline stirs awake when she hears an unfamiliar voice calling out something that sounds very much like her name. She's still feeling all sorts of terrible so instead of opening her eyes and getting up, she just turns to her side and groggily murmurs "Damon?"

There's an awkward pause.

"…it's Klaus, love."

Her eyes fly open and she scrambles to get up. "How did you…"

"No, don't get up." Klaus says, helping her back to bed. "Damon called and said you weren't feeling well so I asked him where you live, and then he had to give me your door code because he's still stuck in traffic and he didn't want you woken up to let me in."

"I'm sorry we have to reschedule the meeting." Caroline says, closing her eyes weakly.

"It's fine. How are you feeling?"

"Awful. I don't get it, I was okay yesterday and then this morning…"

"Do you want to go to the hospital or –"

"No, I'm okay here at home. I just wish I'd stop throwing up so much."

Klaus observes his baby mama as objectively as he can. She looks a little pale but it does look like there's no need to take her to the hospital, so he gets up from the edge of her bed to head out of the room.

"Klaus?"

He turns around and sees Caroline looking at him. There's something in her eyes that makes that beating thing in his chest pump blood into his head in amounts way more than necessary.

"Are you leaving?" Caroline asks.

She tells herself that she's asking simply because she wants to know; it's not like she's going to stop him if he says 'You look okay, I'm out of here'. But the truth is that for some reason there's a part of her that's worried if he goes away. Maybe it's because his presence assures her that she's not alone in this. Or maybe she's just used to having Damon by her side when she needs someone to take care of her and she's substituting Klaus for Damon while he's not here. Still maybe her emotions are all over the place because of hormonal imbalance from being prego.

Yeah, it has to be the hormones.

"I just have to get the things I left in your living room, love." Klaus answers quietly. "I'll stay until you feel better."

She nods and watches him leave. She hears some clinking from the kitchen and when Klaus comes back five minutes later he has a mug in his hands and whatever's in it smells… weird but kind of fragrant.

"Here, drink this." Klaus says, handing her the mug. "Sage says it'll help."

Caroline mumbles a thank you as she takes the earthenware and drinks up. She scrunches up her nose slightly at the oddly spicy taste of what seems to be tea but feels better as the liquid warms her queasy stomach.

"What's this anyway?"

"Ginger tea."

Caroline looks like she wants to gag and returns the mug still three-fourths full. "Thanks, I think I've drunken enough."

Klaus shakes his head. "At least half of it", he tells her. Personally he can't stand ginger in any way shape or form, but Sage says it helps with the nausea and it keeps dehydration at bay so he just pinched his nose when he prepared the tea and put on the most normal expression he could when he made Caroline drink, lest he be accused of hypocrisy.

The bed-ridden blonde sends a semi-scowl into Klaus' direction as she takes the mug unto her lips again and takes one large gulp as quickly as possible.

"So…" Klaus starts. "Damon told me that you live alone."

Caroline puts the ginger tea down on her bedside table (hoping Klaus would forget all about it) and then nods. "My best friend Elena used to live here, but she moved in with Damon's brother after they got engaged."

"Are you waiting for someone else to move in?"

"Well I figured I'll just keep the apartment to myself until Bonnie and Jeremy get into another big fight."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sorry, Bonnie's our other best friend." Caroline explains. "She's with Jeremy, he's Elena's brother. They're on and off and when I lived with Damon she stayed here with Elena. She still stays here occasionally when she and Jeremy aren't okay."

Klaus raises a brow discreetly. If he's following her right, Bonnie is dating Elena's brother and Caroline's ex-boyfriend is Elena's boyfriend's brother.

Are the three of them trying to make themselves related to each other?

"I am absolutely against this 'living alone' arrangement, love. Isn't there anyone else who can stay with you here? What about your family?" he asks instead.

"I don't have any siblings. My dad died two years ago and my mom's in Belarus with the Peace Corps." Caroline answers. She smiles at Klaus faintly as she adds, "It's okay, really. Today's just one of those bad days, you know? Besides, my mom's going to be home in three months. I haven't told her about this because she's just going to worry about me all the time, but when she gets home…"

Klaus rubs his temples. He's probably going to die from anxiety worrying about her and his kid if she doesn't get anyone else to move in with her so she's not alone while pregnant.

Should he ask Bekah to move in with Caroline?

…_Nope, Bekah's too territorial and Klaus as her brother is prime territory.  
_

How about Sage?

But she's always on call – _Why are so many people having kids all the time? Um, excuse me, you're about to become one of those people_ – it would just be as if Caroline still lives alone.

Katherine, maybe?

_I am not letting my kid anywhere near that psychotic bitch._

…

_Damn it, Klaus, is that the entire list of females in your life right now? Bekah, Sage and Katherine?_

Klaus sighs. He's probably going to regret this, but…

"Move in with me."

The blonde stares at him, wide-eyed.

"I mean it, Caroline." Her name tastes unfamiliarly familiar on his tongue.

Caroline doesn't say anything. She also looks a bit paler than she did when he got there.

"Look, I know we barely know each other, but you have to trust me in this. You can't be alone the next time something like this happens. I don't live in Lakeshore but my apartment has two rooms and you can have one of them."

…

"I'm doing this for my child." Klaus adds, as if assuring her that he didn't suddenly develop romantic feelings for her like mushrooms sprouting overnight will help win him the discussion.

She still doesn't say anything, and her unsettled expression is alarming Klaus.

"Are you alright, love?" he says, moving closer to her. She tries to get away from him but he's closed their distance quite quickly and he's just inches from her and -.

"Caroline? Is there –"

BLEAUUUUUUUURGH.

The next thing Klaus knows, he's staring down in horror at his vomit-covered shirt, which just became the latest victim of Caroline's morning sickness.

A/N:

1. Guys, I'm now on tumblr as **erica-dreams-in-colour**! (I have 31 followers so far. Haha is that too few?) Please leave your URL's in your review so I can follow you. :)

2. To my dear anon reviewers:

justine – I am so stoked that you picked up on the 'Tatia' hint! She will appear in the story but I'm not yet sure if she's going to be good or bad, if she will go after Klaus or if Klaus will go after her.

arabella – Ugh your reviews make my day! :) The truth is, I wrote a full smut scene but I felt like it was too crass and I couldn't make it classy no matter how hard I tried so I just ended it at the point where I felt that things were still in good taste. (Sorry about that, I'll try better in the next chapters.) As for Klaus knowing Caroline's real name, it's explained by this line in Chapter 1:

_"Caroline – why was she here?" he asks Sage immediately, remembering the name that Damon said when he told the intercom voice to call someone for him._


	5. A Portrait of Joseph

Chapter 4

**A Portrait of Joseph (Ginoux, 1888)**

"_If only you pay attention, you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

"Here. It's the only guy shirt I could find in the apartment."

Klaus groans inwardly when he unfurls the shirt that Damon hands him. It's a blue and orange crew neck, no problem with that, but it looks large enough to fit both Klaus and Damon together and so it goes without saying that there's definitely a problem with that.

"It's Brady Wolfe's. You know him, the NFL player?" Damon asks.

Klaus shakes his head. Good luck finding a proper Englishman who watches that kind of football.

"He's the guy Caroline was rebounding from when she slept with you."

"Damon!" Caroline cries in horror, chucking a pillow at the Salvatore from her bed. It's bad enough that she puked on Klaus' shirt, does Damon really have to tell him that the shirt he's given him to change into belongs to her ex, aka the reason why they're all in this situation anyway?

Damon ducks and successfully avoids the fluffy yellow projectile. "What? I'm just giving Mikey here a crash course on recent Caroline Forbes history."

"…don't call me Mikey."

"By the way, did you know that Caroline is number eight in the list of hottest NFL WAGs this year?"

"I was not an NFL WAG!"

"Tell that to the Bleacher Report. They wrote the article, not me. Anyway Mikey, where were we again? Oh, yeah, you get that I can't take my shirt off and lend it to you right? So I guess it's Brady's hand-me-down or nothing."

Damon's extremely irritating smugness causes a vein in Klaus' head to throb, and he decides to stand up before the said vein explodes. "I'm… going to change into this."

The Salvatore shrugs half-heartedly as he watches Klaus walk out of the room. He turns back to Caroline, only to be hit squarely in the face with Mrs. Taffy the stuffed penguin.

"Ow! What the hell was that for?"

"You're an ass!"

"Really, Blondie, you're going to insult me by calling out my best asset?" Damon drawls, widening his eyes in mock disbelief.

"Now he probably thinks that I'm one of those high maintenance trophy bimbos who do nothing but spend their man's money. And I've never even shopped using Brady's card!" Caroline huffs miserably.

Damon can't help but smile at Caroline's words as he walks towards her closet and starts scouring for something behind the row of blazers and trench coats. "Relax. You're no Crystal Harris and he'd know that if he's got an IQ higher than Hugh Hefner's… which I'm guessing is about 10 right now."

"Can you please just not freak him out too much?" the blonde asks, her voice softening. "Klaus is a nice guy… I think."

"Really, thirty minutes with him and you think he's a nice guy?"

"Well he's at least got to be a decent person, right? I mean, he looked for me when he could've totally ignored seeing us at Rainey-Harper. And he went here when you told him that I wasn't okay. And…"

"And?"

"…And he asked me to move in with him while I don't have a room mate."

Damon quickly abandons whatever he's hunting for in the closet and turns to Caroline with a horrifically indescribable expression painted all over his face. "He asked you to WHAT?"

"He asked me to move in with him until Mom comes back from Belarus."

"Okay, Blondie, the next part of this conversation is very important. This is the part where you tell me that you said no."

"Well I though about it and I said yes."

Damon looks like he's ready to collapse. "Are you nuts? We don't even know this guy! What if he suddenly goes batshit and like, rapes you or something?"

Caroline rolls her eyes. "Yeah, it would be so bad if that happens. I might get pregnant with some stranger's kid. Oh, wait, I'm already pregnant with some stranger's kid."

"Christ, Caroline, if that happens then the kid is the least of your problems. How about permanent emotional and psychological damage, the one that leaves you staring off into empty space at some mental hospital with Lindsay Lohan as a room mate?" Damon answers animatedly, wildly flailing his arms in the air for a dramatic effect. "Look, if the problem here is your lack of a room mate, then move back in with me."

"And witness how you screw half of Chicago six ways to Sunday? No thanks. Besides, did you see Elena's face when she saw us hugging? What do you think she'll look like when she learns that I'm living with you again?"

"Oh please. Elena doesn't give a rat's ass about me."

"Boohoo Damon the drama queen."

"No, seriously. Remember when I left you and Mikey in my office to sort things out or whatever? I called Elena. And you know what she told me? That I don't have to explain anything to her because if we're happy together then she's happy for us."

"And you believe her?"

"Because she's engaged to my brother and not organizing a giant flash mob to declare her undying love for me, yes."

"Ugh. You're impossible."

"And you're crazy!"

"Well it was your idea to find my kid's dad!"

"Yes, I wanted to find your kid's that so you could know him, not live with him!"

"Look, I know we don't know Klaus very well –"

"Correction, we don't know him at all."

"- fine, so we don't know him at all but we'll never get to know him if we don't give him a chance. I want us to be friends for our baby."

Damon glares at Caroline as he folds his arms across his chest. "That statement's going to be followed by an 'And', right?"

Caroline sighs helplessly. Sometimes she hates how much Damon knows her. "Yes. I want us to be friends for our baby, and I kinda need to get on his good side so can you please not be so mean to him?"

"Oh so that's where all this is coming from." The Salvatore gripes. "And why the fuck do you need to get on his good side?"

"…because you're right…" The blonde finally admits, shifting her eyes downward. "I don't have it in me to tell my mom that I'm pregnant from a one night stand."

Damon bites his lower lip guiltily as that familiar feeling of remorse bubbles inside him. For the millionth time since they learned that Caroline is pregnant, he wants to kick himself in the nuts. Of all the things that he could've told her to do to get over Brady, he just had to tell her to hitch and ditch, and she just had to trust him enough to think it was a good idea.

(Well it's usually a good idea, but…)

"I've done my best to be better than that insecure neurotic mess I was when I was in Virginia, and she's been so proud of me. I can't tell her that I got knocked up by a total stranger. I don't want to disappoint her."

The Salvatore's stance softens as he walks towards Caroline and sits at the edge of her bed. He understands what she's trying to say because he knows about Caroline's troubled childhood, stemming from her parents' strained relationship and eventual separation to finally her dad's coming out. He knows about Caroline's rebellious streak, how Sheriff Forbes had to arrest her own daughter twice for underage drinking, how things got better sadly only when Bill Forbes was diagnosed with leukodystrophy and given just three more years to live.

"What are you gonna do?" he asks quietly.

"When Mom gets back, I'm going to ask Klaus to pretend that we were together for a while and that we broke up shortly before we found out that I'm pregnant." Caroline answers. "I'm still going to have a kid and I still won't be with Klaus, but at least Mom will think that it happened out of love and not irresponsibility."

"You know, dishonesty is worse than irresponsibility."

"I just want her to stay happy. I don't want her to worry about me doing crazy stuff again. What happened with Klaus – it was a one-time lapse of judgement. It doesn't mean that I'm slipping back to the old me."

"For the record I personally think that this is a bigger lapse of judgement –"

"Damon, please." Caroline pleads.

The guy finally throws his hands up. "Fine. I'll play nice with Klaus for you, but if he ever does anything stupid –"

The conversation is interrupted by a knock on the door; the knob slowly turns and the blessed wooden plank opens. In comes Niklaus Mikaelson, looking like a poor little puppy in Brady's way too oversized shirt.

At six foot one and a hundred sixty something pounds, Klaus isn't exactly a small guy, but when you're wearing a shirt made for a guy who's very probably JJ Watt's twin separated at birth, you're really gonna look awful. He doesn't say anything, not that he has to, because it can clearly be seen that he's a) really pissed but, b) can't do anything about it and c) is utterly miserable all at the same time. (If you're wondering what that looks like, feel free to imagine Julie Plec telling Joseph Morgan that his schmex scene will be with that Vaughn dude and not with Candice Accola.)

Guess who can't help but promptly burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter that echoes all throughout the apartment building, making the pigeons in the rooftop fly away in surprise.

"Damon!" Caroline hisses, pulling at her ex-boyfriend's arm. "You said you'd be nice!"

Klaus glares as Damon pauses to wipe the tears from his gorgeous blue eyes. The Salvatore's lips still curl up a little, itching to explode once again into laughter at Klaus' ridiculous appearance, but he straightens his shirt (and his face) and mutters "Okay, fine." before going back to his expedition unto Caroline's closet.

"I'm so sorry about Damon, he's really just a jerk sometimes..." Caroline tells Klaus sheepishly, not really sure what to say.

"Aha!"

Before Klaus could answer, a triumphant cry is heard and Damon emerges from the wardrobe holding… what the hell, is that Klaus' Henley?

"Here you go." Damon says, tossing Klaus' lost and now found shirt back to its rightful owner.

A scowl makes its way to Caroline's face. "You kept that?"

Klaus sucks in big, deep breaths as he summons every ounce of self-control left in his body. So Damon knew that his shirt was somewhere in Caroline's closet all this time and he purposefully made him wear the sack he's got on right now just for fun?

"A good thing I did too, eh? If I'd thrown it away like you wanted me to then Mikey would've really been stuck with Brady's old shirt."

The supposedly calming yoga breathing exercises that Bekah taught Klaus fail to do their job. He grabs a table lamp from somewhere and smashes it into Damon's head.

"Klaus!" Caroline shrieks.

Klaus doesn't stop. He hits Damon again and again and again until the git falls down on the floor and the bloody bastard is… well literally a bloody bastard.

"Klaus! Klaus! Klaus!" come more screams.

"Klaus?"

…

"Um, Klaus." Caroline repeats a little louder, snapping his baby daddy out of the extremely satisfying daydream he had immersed himself in. "Don't you want to… change into your shirt?"

Klaus blinks. He looks at his hand – no bloody table lamp – and then at Damon – no bashed skull.

"Well if you like Brady's shirt better, keep it on, by all means." Damon tells him, muffling a snicker.

Klaus' eyes shift from Damon to Caroline. Nope, can't risk going to jail anytime soon with a baby on the way.

"Give me a second to change my shirt, love."

-o-

"I tell him not to make impulsive decisions until we've ascertained paternity, he asks the girl to move in with him. I tell him not to have the girl move in until we have a court order sustaining their cohabitation as share time, he tells me that she's moving in today."

Sage smiles in amusement as Finn pauses from his ever-growing litany of complaints about Klaus. Caroline was moving into Klaus' apartment that day, and Sage kindly volunteered to 'help out' since she's not just her patient, she may very well be part of the family soon too. Finn tagged along, though his girlfriend suspects that it has more to do with finally meeting Klaus' baby mama more than actually helping her move in.

"Why is he so stubborn? It's direly frustrating." Atty. Mikaelson continues.

"I don't think he's being stubborn. I think he's just being… Klaus." Sage says, taking a seat beside Finn on one of the stools in Klaus' kitchen where they were waiting for the pair to arrive. "He never listens to anyone once he's made up his mind, does he?"

"That's precisely the definition of stubbornness."

"Don't stress yourself out, Peach. As time goes by Klaus will realize that he doesn't have to take everything about fatherhood too seriously."

"I genuinely doubt that. All the three father figures he has had in his life he either hated or at least disliked, and he's always going to take fatherhood too seriously if only to assure himself that he's not going to be anything like them."

"Speaking of fathers… have you told your father?"

"No. Klaus told me not to tell anyone yet. I reckon he'll tell Kol and Bekah soon enough, given that we live next door. Kol's likely going to tell Mother, and from her I don't know how long it would take for the news to reach Father."

"Maybe a grandchild might help patch things up between Klaus and Mikael." Sage offers.

It's Finn's turn to smile, albeit sadly. "I'll be surprised if Father shows even one bit of grandparental interest on a child he's not consanguineously related to, and Klaus himself can't care any less about what Father does or doesn't. If it wasn't going to shame Mother, he would've dropped 'Mikaelson' from his name years ago."

A vibrating tone is heard and the lawyer turns to his phone. "They're here."

Sure enough, a few moments later Klaus makes his very inelegant entrance, dragging in a couple of large, feminine suitcases into the apartment. He pauses from the Herculean task long enough to hold the door open for a pretty little blonde who Sage immediately makes her way towards.

"Caroline, great to see you again!" Sage greets as she leans in for a quick hug.

Caroline obliges happily. She already knows that Sage is Klaus' brother's girlfriend, and that sat down well with her since she took a comfortable liking for the doctor during their first meeting.

"I'd like you to meet Finn, Klaus' brother." Sage introduces, motioning at her boyfriend.

Klaus frowns as he watches Finn's wearied expression melt when he finally 'meets' Caroline. A smile forms on his brother's face, obviously pleased at what he sees. "It's you!"

'It's you'?

The frown deepens when Klaus turns to Caroline sees that a smile has lit up her face too. Do Finn and Caroline have some kind of history or something...?

Lord. Please no.

"You're the guy from that café in Cabo!" Caroline exclaims.

"Please call me Finn." The older Mikaelson tells her warmly, and Klaus gets a funny feeling that from now on his brother will ease on the 'evil-bitch-passing-off-her-brat-as-your'-kid' accusation. Finn turns to Klaus for an explanation. "I met her when we were in Cabo last year. She was the girl I told you about, the one who called your paintings... ahem, unusual."

"Wait, he's the guy who painted those landscapes?" Caroline asks in surprise.

"We can talk about that later." Klaus quickly cuts in. He's thankful that a ten-second conversation about his paintings is apparently as far as Finn and Caroline's history goes, but truth be told, he has no intention of ever discussing those paintings again. "If you'll excuse us, I'd like to show Caroline her room now -"

Klaus doesn't even get to hold the handles of Caroline's luggage because another knock is heard on the door. He's not expecting anyone else today, who the bloody hell can that be?

Finn makes the effort to get the door. To his own surprise, his other brother Kol strolls straight into the living room.

"You're all here, brilliant! I was thinking we could have dinner together tonight, you know, maybe some Tuscan lamb and stuff 'cause it's been a while since we last had dinner together and –"

The youngest Mikaelson stops mid-sentence, mouth gaping open as he finally gets to take in the sight in front of him.

There's Finn and Sage, looking at him like he stumbled upon some secret Da Vinci Code meeting (but there's no naked people fucking senseless in the middle of a chanting circle so that can't be it); there's Klaus, just standing there frozen like he's torn between barking at Kol to get out or letting him into the aforementioned nonexistent Da Vinci Code meeting; and there's a girl, Kol recognizes her as that pretty blonde who holds the title of being Klaus' first non-Tatia-looking fuck buddy (So is she gonna be the sacrificial virgin but wait she's been with Klaus so she's not a virgin and none of it is making any sense).

There's a bunch of suitcases on the floor and… what the heck is happening here again?

"Kol, this is Caroline." Finn comes to the rescue. "She's gonna be staying with Klaus for a while…"

The funny look that spreads all over Kol's face makes Klaus want to cringe. Of course Kol already knows Caroline - this is what happens when you live next door to your brothers.

"Hello, Caroline, nice to see you again." The youngest Mikaelson greets chirpily.

Remembering their not-so-graceful-first-meeting, aka Kol's witnessing of her first and hopefully only walk of shame, a slight blush tinges Caroline's cheeks. "You too…Kol…"

"You know each other?" Finn, of course, is surprised.

"Kol…" _ahem _"…met her when she was here the first time." Klaus rushes the vague answer before Kol has the chance to say anything indecent. "Now if you'll excuse us, Caroline should really be settling in…"

"Sure, no problem." Kol replies casually. He flashes an impish grin at Klaus before declaring "I'll just see you at dinner then, Caroline."

_The bloody –_

No. No no no. Kol did NOT just invite Caroline over for dinner later.

Sage knows how disastrous the situation can turn out to be and tries to help. "Kol, I don't think… I think we should let Caroline rest…"

"Come on Sage, it's just dinner. Think of it as a welcome party for Caroline."

"Don't you have practice for the fund raiser –"

"Nope, practice is cancelled until Tuesday, I'm all free."

The sheer frustration makes Klaus bite the insides of his cheeks. He just wanted to have Caroline move in quietly and not deal with any kind of family drama until much, much later but again reality is a bitch that especially likes to bite him in the ass.

"So I'll see you later, Caroline?" Kol repeats.

Caroline turns to Klaus as if to ask him what she should say. Klaus knows that they're backed against the wall because Kol will insist to death until he gets what he wants… and besides, he doesn't want Caroline to think that he's ashamed of her.

He curses under his breath before slowly nodding at Caroline.

"Um, okay Kol. I guess I'll see you later."

-o-

Truth be told, the copious amount of alcohol she ingested that night made Caroline unable to remember much about her hook-up with Klaus, let alone what his place looks like. So when they finally get into his room, which is to become her room for the next three months, she feels as if she's there for the first time.

The room is simple, one with the seemingly minimalist layout of the entire apartment. There's a queen-sized bed, (for a second she wonders how many one-night stands it has hosted before she shudders and shakes the thought off her head) the sheets and pillow cases already changed into a neutral white. In a corner is a dresser area next to a row of cabinets that lead to a door, likely the bathroom. There's a desk and a chair by the window, and the creme-coloured walls are mounted with shelves filled with books and small paintings.

Her eyes linger a bit longer on the paintings. An abstracts explosion of colours. A modern impressionist rendering of the Big Ben. A brown horse grazing, in lyric sfumato.

She wonders if Klaus painted those too.

"Feel free to make yourself comfortable, love." Klaus says as while he takes the last of her suitcases into the room.

"Thank you."

"Do you need help unpacking?"

"No, it's alright."

"If there's anything else you need –"

"Where are you sleeping?" Caroline suddenly asks.

Klaus tilts his head slightly, like he didn't expect her to be asking that question. "The other room's across from yours but the bed I bought won't be delivered until Wednesday so I'll be taking the couch for the mean time."

For the briefest of moments Caroline considers asking him to share the room with her if he wants to, but she quickly decides against it. She really thinks that Klaus is a nice guy, it's just… she doesn't want them to be stuck in such a forced, awkward, possibly suffocating situation when they barely know each other.

"I apologize if Kol came out a bit too insistent with the dinner invitation." Klaus says, filling in the silence. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine." Caroline replies, smiling at him in assurance. "I mean, if we're really going through with this then I'm going to meet your family sooner or later right? Might as well do it now."

Fair point, Klaus finds himself thinking. It's not like he can hide Caroline forever since Kol and Bekah do live next door.

"So, anything I need to know about your family?"

Klaus considers her question.

_Finn is a Cambridge-grad lawyer who until meeting you this morning insisted that you were a vile, despicable woman trying to pass off someone else's brat as my spawn. Kol is an 'exceptionally gifted' nut job whose driving license is currently suspended for DUI following a .34 BAC level. Rebekah is a territorial perfectionist who hates her brothers' girlfriends, and she will lop your head off when she learns that you're having my kid._

Hm, sounds very positive.

"Finn, Kol and Bekah live in the apartment across the hall." He replies instead. "Finn is a corporate lawyer downtown, Kol is an intern at Rainey-Harper and my sister Rebekah is pre-law at U of C."

Caroline looks at him uncertainly. "Um, are you a lawyer too?"

Klaus almost laughs. "No. I'm an…" he hesitates for a second – he wants to say artist, but he hasn't painted anything in the past two years excluding Caroline's very unfinished portrait.

"I'm an art dealer." He settles to answer.

"So you're not really a horse trainer?"

"A note for you love. Don't believe everything that a guy you're picking up in a bar tells you." Klaus replies with a wink.

Caroline bites into a grin, remembering how she did pick him up that night. "Fine, I'll remember that for next time."

She proceeds to open her bags and sort out her stuff so she can place them in the room already. Klaus turns to leave to give her some privacy, but as he walks away he feels oddly discomforted about her last words. For some inexplicable reason, the thought of Caroline going to some other bar flirting with some other guy... it makes him extremely bothered.

-o-

The 'some Tuscan lamb or stuff' that Kol casually spoke of turns out to be a feast of foods abundant enough for a Christmas dinner, a very astounded Caroline discovers as she takes her seat in the Mikaelsons' dining room later that evening. There's at least three different kinds of fruit and greens salads, seven platters of delightful-looking meat dishes, a ton of veggie sides and oh dear she hates asparagus soup but that piping bowl in front of her smells absolutely heavenly.

"Where did they get all of these?" She whispers to Klaus, who himself looks like he's in the process of deciding whether to congratulate Kol for the unquestionably splendid banquet or irately demand 'What on earth are you doing?'

"I have no idea." Is unfortunately the only answer that he's able to come up with.

Sage chuckles before turning to the youngest Mikaelson with a very amused smile. "Wow Kol… you really made the effort…"

"Come on, Family, we have a guest!" Kol exclaims cheerfully. "I thought we should show Caroline some English hospitality."

"Thank you, this is very...grand." Caroline remarks, still in awe. "You shouldn't have bothered -"

"Nonsense, I was going to cook dinner for these people anyway, adding two or three more dishes wasn't tedious at all." assures Kol. "Besides, Klaus rarely brings friends home so I'm glad that you're here. I was beginning to think he's gone asexual."

Klaus' eyes widen in horror while Caroline looks like she wants to crawl into a hole and die.

"Oh, no, what did I say? I meant asocial." Kol says cheekily.

Sage swallows, quickly thinking about something – anything – she can say to change the topic before Klaus throws a plate at Kol. "Um, so where's Rebekah?"

"Did I hear my name?"

A striking blonde walks into the dining room, her gait as elegant as an Andalusian dressage champion. With her clear blue eyes and refined English features, Caroline immediately thinks that the girl is extremely pretty, and she offers her a reserved smile. Klaus on the other hand lets a long breath out and braces himself for even worse times.

Rebekah slips into a seat to Kol's right, allowing her to notice for the first time an unfamiliar girl sitting next to Klaus. She promptly ignores the girl and turns to her brother, raising an aristocratic brow ever so slightly in the 'I-am-the-queen-why-is-this-peasant-in-my-table' kind of way.

"I wasn't aware that we were going to have company." Bekah says flatly, eyes still trained on Klaus.

"Rebekah, this is Caroline. She will be staying with me next door." Klaus announces, injecting as much authority in his voice as he can. He knows how catty Bekah is with her brothers' girlfriends – heck Sage's been with Finn for two years and Bekah barely tolerates her – but she'll have to swallow her trust issues for the next three months and Klaus wants to be clear on that.

Bekah's head flicks at Caroline's direction, her chin raised in obvious distrust but knowing better than to dare ask then and there why she was going to stay with Klaus. "Pleasure to meet you, Caroline. I've never heard about you from Nik, but I'm sure we'll get to know each other soon."

His sister's stinging words makes Kol grin impishly as he watches the drama unfold. Poor Caroline. She seems like a nice girl, but Bekah's just going to tear her into pieces. He turns to Nik's lady friend, only to be surprised to see that Caroline is looking straight at Rebekah, not intimidated at all.

_Exciting._

"Nice to meet you too, Rebekah." Caroline answers neutrally. "I look forward to getting to know you as well."

"So now that Bekah's here, shall we begin dinner then? I wouldn't want the asparagus soup to get cold." Finn says wearily.

The sooner they're done eating, the sooner this all ends.

The sounds of plates and tableware take over and everyone relaxes for the moment as they dig into the food, which are all incredibly delectable like everything else that Kol cooks.

Hating the way this whole moving in thing turned out, Klaus sighs before taking a long sip of water. He knew his family would have to meet Caroline soon, he just didn't expect it to happen this early. First night in his flat, really? And with both Bekah and Kol? At this rate crawling through the borders of North Korea might be less stressful for Caroline.

Maybe he should have listened to Finn and though everything thoroughly before he asked Caroline to move in. Or better yet he should have rented another flat, one that was at least a thousand miles away from his family.

He raises his hand to reach for the crab cakes' serving spoon, not realizing that Caroline has done the same thing as well. Their hands bump against each other's in midair, and he turns to Caroline only to see that she's turned to look at him as well. A weird funny feeling flutters in Klaus' stomach as Caroline hurriedly draws her hand back and casts her eyes downward in an effort to hide the blush that's crept on her cheeks.

Klaus swallows. He keeps his face straight, extends the hand he never withdrew to go on reaching for the serving spoon. Kol hides a happy beam as Klaus takes a serving of the appetizer and gives it to Caroline before taking a serving for his own.

"So Caroline," Rebekah begins, stabbing at a poor baby potato on her plate. "How did you meet my brother?"

Finn almost chokes on the grapefruit in his salad while Sage grabs a glass of water and drinks for dear life.

Caroline can only glance at Klaus in uncertainty. Has he told them...?

"We met at the Distillery." Klaus answers for her, narrowing his eyes at Rebekah in a silent warning. _Stop it._

"Your favorite bar, Nik. Drinking buddies then, huh?"

Kol enthusiastically leans closer to the table. Oh how he'd give anything in the world right now to tell Bekah that they definitely did more than drink. It also ends with a 'k', but try something that startings with an 'f'.

"I'm sure they share interests other than alcohol." Finn tells his sister.

Bekah smirks at Klaus before turning to Caroline. "Of course. What do you do, Caroline?"

"Marketing management." Caroline says, forcing herself to smile at Rebekah. "I've been with Salvatore Development for a year now."

"I'm sorry, the company name doesn't ring a bell." Queen Bex replies. The expression on her face though is anything but sorry. "And before that you were...?"

"I majored in Communications at Northwestern."

"Oh, you went to Northwestern! Great party school, I heard. Nik went to a very boring school, Ox-"

"Caroline and I don't really spend much time talking about educational qualifications." Klaus growls in interruption.

Kol laughs. "Of course you don't, Nik. Only Bekah is actually interested in a topic as boring as school. Pray, Caroline, do tell us what you and Nik get along over."

Cringing inside, Caroline shoots another hesitant look at Klaus. Lord, they've never even hung out, how is she supposed to know what he's interested in?

"... Paintings." she utters. Well he said he's an art dealer, he's got to be interested in art and those art history classes she took with Bonnie and Elena during freshman year in Northwestern could finally have some use.

Finn's eyes soften when he hears Caroline's answer. He looks at Klaus, searching for any trace of emotion– but his brother's face remains as blank as the unused canvases in his painting room.

"Nik's a great painter. He's shown in at least a dozen galleries in London alone." Kol tells Caroline proudly, like a kid who totally looks up to his older brother. "He likes oil on canvas, but I personally think he's better with a palette knife."

"I've seen only his oil on canvas." Caroline replies quietly. Well, technically it's true. Those paintings in Cabo and the three paintings in his bedroom are all oil on canvas.

"You must show her sometime, Nik. Remember that series you made about London at night? Those are my favourites. Next to your final year portfolio, of course."

Rebekah puts her fork down. "You haven't painted anything in years, Nik."

Klaus keeps quiet but Kol glances at him with a knowing look in his eyes.

"Here, Caroline, try the Tuscan lamb, it's wonderful." Sage says in an effort to give Caroline a break. Caroline is only too relieved to obliged, biting a forkful of the viand while Rebekah was on temporary hiatus from her obviously less well-meaning attempts at conversation.

However, she ends up doing the talking herself. The Tuscan lamb tastes absolutely glorious – succulent, flavourful and it almost melts in her mouth.

"This has to be the best lamb I've had." she tells Kol before embarking upon another forkful of the viand. Honestly she could eat nothing but Kol's Tuscan lamb for the next three months.

Kol smiles warmly at her. "It's an infusion I learned in cooking class. We should hang out some time, I'll show you how to make it and you can cook for Nik."

Hearing his name mentioned yet again, Klaus reaches his tipping point. Looks like there's no redemption for this night – maybe he should go take the bull by the horns after all.

Against all the manners of decorum that had been drilled into his skull, he proceeds to quietly reach for the phone in his pocket and there down below the table start typing an SOS for a person he wanted to kill just days ago.

_To: Damon Salvatore_

_Call Caroline._

Attempting to ease the once-more growing tension, Finn tries to steer the conversation away from Klaus. "So Kol, how are things at Rainey-Harper?"

"Fine and dandy, brother. Everyone's busy with the fund-raiser this weekend. Speaking of which,"

Klaus groans inwardly. Please Kol, enough invitations for one day -

"Are you free on Saturday evening, Caroline? It's Rainey Harper Foundation's annual fund raising ball and I've been invited to play with the orchestra. It'll be brilliant if you could come."

_Come on Salvatore call her already!_

"Didn't you get the tickets already last week?" Bekah says. The queen says it sweetly but it's evident that she's irked her brother is inviting a peasant.

Kol dismisses his sister's concern with a casual wave of a hand. "That's okay Bekah, I can get a plus one for Nik easy peasy. What do you say, Caroline?"

The blonde smiles diffidently at Kol before turning to Klaus. Should she…

She feels her phone vibrate and fishes it out of her pocket. The caller ID says Damon, but she decides against taking the call lest she give Klaus' family a reason to think that she's being rude. She's about to press the 'ignore' button when she hears Klaus speak.

"You should get that, love."

"It's alright, it's just Damon. I'll just call him later –"

"You should really get that, love." Klaus repeats, his eyes strongly urging her to do what he says.

Caroline gets the point.

"Excuse me, I'll just take this call." She quietly tells the group before rising to leave, not once looking back.

Caroline has barely made it out of the dining room before Bekah shoots his brother an irate glare.

"What on earth are you doing, Nik? Who's that girl? Why is she staying with you?"

Finn doesn't say anything in favor of letting his brother handle the situation. Klaus takes a deep breath before facing his two youngest siblings and telling them what the deal really is.

Here goes…

"She's pregnant, isn't she?" Kol says before Klaus can get the first word out.

Rebekah reels. "What?"

"Well, that's the only plausible explanation. She spent the night at your place a month or so ago, I didn't see or hear about her any other time after that and now suddenly she's moved in with you. She's pregnant, isn't she, Nik?"

"Nik!" Bekah demands. "What the bloody hell is Kol talking about?"

Klaus closes his eyes tiredly. This is going to be one long night indeed.

-o-

A/N:

1. **erica-dreams-in-colour** at tumblr for my pathetic attempts at graphics/gif's/stuff for this story. :)

2. To **magically-muddled** (tremendously talented writer, go read her fics!) sorry I haven't had time to reply to your review blizzard. What can I say, I love Tyler and I refuse to bash him just because Klaroline is my OTP. Both he and Elijah will be important in the story later, they just can't be in the story yet because Klaroline needs some time to grow before I throw in the lions. :)

3. Am I the only one who's upset that Klaus might sleep with Hayley even though Caroline herself has slept with other guys tons of times before? I don't even know what makes me upset – characters on this show have 'less meaningful' sex with everyone else all the time – I'm just really upset.


	6. Road with a Cypress and a Star

Chapter 5

**Road with a Cypress and a Star (1890)**

_"And putting little white dots on the blue-black canvas – this is not enough to paint a starry sky."_

_-Vincent Van Gogh_

* * *

"_Hello?"_

"_Finn? It's Pearl, is this a convenient time to be calling?"_

"_Pearl, yes, I've been expecting to hear from you. I trust you've received my brother's will?"_

"_I have, Finn, and that is why I'd like to speak to you. I'm afraid I cannot admit this will for acceptance in its entirety."_

"_I'm sorry?"_

"_The will names Niklaus' unborn child with Ms. Caroline Forbes as heir to his paintings, his share in the Leventhorpe-Rath estate and to any royalties coming off LRI Achilles. Heirship to Niklaus' paintings is fine and can be accepted for execution, but as regards to the Rath estate and Achilles' royalties, which I assume is the important matter here… we have a problem."_

-o-

If there's anything worse than knocking up a stranger and having to take her to live with you and the regrettably insane group of people you call your family, it's knocking up a stranger and having to witness her throw up in your bathroom like there's no tomorrow. Just ask Klaus Mikaelson, who is currently busy trying to keep himself from grimacing as he watches Caroline Forbes throw up in his Chicago apartment bathroom worse than Pitch Perfect's Aubrey Posen on the most stressful day of her entire life.

He bends down to hand Caroline a glass of water as she reels from vomiting, but his ears are still ringing with the dreadful retching sound that seems to echo endlessly throughout the tiled room. Caroline looks like a mess – her complexion is pasty, her eyes are tired and watery, and strands of limp blonde hair stick to her sweat-damped skin. Don't even get Klaus started on what the bathroom smells like at that moment because the only thing he has to say is that it's a miracle that his lungs haven't collapsed.

"It's okay love, here, rinse your -"

BLEAUUUUUUUURGH.

Caroline retches as another wave of nausea overwhelms her. Klaus flinches again, but he guiltily reaches out to gather her hair and hold it back for her while she throws up yet another time.

And all his life he thought morning sickness was overrated.

He helps her back to bed when she feels better enough to stop throwing up, and for the first time since her disastrous moving in yesterday he's thankful that she did move in with him, even if she had to meet his crazy family as consequence. If anything happened to Caroline while she was alone... let it be made clear that Klaus did not want a kid but as long as it's here, he's bent on looking after it.

"…awful... have to miss work again…" Caroline mumbles weakly as she fumbles with her phone to call her boss.

"Just rest, it's going to get better soon." Klaus says, though he isn't sure who he's really trying to convince – Caroline or himself.

"… really sorry I dragged you into this…"

He forces a tired smile and shakes his head, not wanting her to feel as guilty as he does. Fine, she was the one who didn't know that antibiotics neutralize pills, but he was the one who was sober when it happened.

"It takes two to tango, love." He settles to reply. "I'll go make you some tea, will you be alright by yourself?"

She nods just as Damon picks up on the other line, and Klaus leaves the room quietly. He goes to the kitchen to prepare the dreadful ginger concoction wondering why on earth child-bearing is glamourized to such ridiculous extents in media when every single thing about it seems so horrible in reality. (Did they ever show Kim Kardashian throwing up like that?) What was his own mother thinking, going through all of this not once but six times?

Speaking of his mother... now that Kol and Bekah know about Caroline, Klaus figures that he has to let his mother know that she has a grandchild on the way. _If_ Kol hasn't already told her last night, that is. The youngest Mikaelson son is extremely close to their mother and speaks to her on the phone almost daily, just another one of Kol's many odd and unexpected characteristics.

He hears his doorbell ringing and so pushes himself off the kitchen counter he's leaning on while waiting for the tea to simmer in favor of getting the door. He pulls the board of wood open and is promptly greeted by a sight that makes him want to run back to the bathroom and just watch Caroline throw up again.

"Hello, brother." Kol greets chirpily.

He's holding something – a piping hot bowl of what looks like English tomato soup– in his oven mitt-covered hands (gray and purple argyle pattern, if you have to ask), and Klaus looks at him questioningly. Sure, Kol likes to cook breakfast (and lunch and dinner) for everyone whenever he can, but that – that does not look like breakfast to Klaus.

Kol looks right back at Klaus and answers the unspoken question with an irritably perky grin. "You said Caroline has morning sickness, right?"

The older Mikaelson brother exhales grudgingly before muttering. "Fine." As mentioned before, everything that Kol cooks is utterly wonderful and maybe it'll make Caroline feel better. He turns to Rebekah, who's standing beside Kol, also holding something - a thick bunch of papers.

"What are those?"

Bekah just raises a brow. "Let us in and you'll find out."

He gives up and lets his siblings in. Kol goes straight to the kitchen were he fixes up the tomato soup so Caroline can eat it while it's warm while Bekah plops into the living room couch and throws the papers on the center table.

"What's this?" Klaus asks, taking a seat opposite Her Royal Highness.

"I scourged the internet for everything I could find out about your new flat mate." Queen Bex replies. She picks up one of the papers and reads it. "For example, did you know that she used to date an NFL player?"

_Yes_, Klaus thinks. That should be the guy whose shirt that Salvatore arsehole made him wear. Brian. Or Bradley. Or something.

Bekah scoffs. "Athlete's girlfriend equals gold digger, Nik. Also, look at this - Ms. Mystic Falls. So she's not just a gold digger, she's also a fake, superficial, narcissistic, twenty three-year-old version of Honey Boo-Boo."

"Rebekah, you're being ridic –"

"Or how about this. She dated the son of Salvatore Development's owner. I bet she got her job only because she was the president's son's girlfriend."

Klaus frowns. Dated the son of Salvatore Development's owner? "What?"

"Here's a picture from the Tribune last year. See, that's your baby mama with the guy in the gray tux. Caption says, 'Ian Somerhalder Foundation Benefit Dinner. Damon Salvatore, son of Salvatore Development Corporation founder Giuseppe Salvatore, with Caroline Forbes."

The older Mikaelson takes the printed article from his sister and looks at the photo himself. It's Damon and Caroline, alright, and although nowhere in the article do the words boyfriend or girlfriend appear, the picture does all the talking. The two of them are all smiles, Damon's arm is wrapped tight around Caroline's waist and her head is affectionately tucked into the Salvatore's chest. Not surprisingly they look smashing together, handsome guy, gorgeous girl – but what gets to Klaus is that they look utterly, sincerely, genuinely happy.

He doesn't know what to think. On one hand, Caroline's past relationships are none of his business more than his past relationships are any of hers. On the other hand, it's just – odd? Weird? Awkward? 'Cause Caroline is having his kid and Damon seems intent on tagging along the entire ride, if his viciously protective attitude when it comes to her says anything. Does he still have feelings for her? Does she have feelings for him? Are they getting back together, is Klaus playing some kind of third wheel here, is Damon going to be his son's stepfather? It was Damon who went with Caroline to the check-up with Sage before Klaus learned about her – so if he never got to know that she was pregnant, was Damon planning on…

"There's plenty more here for you to read at your convenience." Rebekah says, tapping a perfectly-manicured finger at the rest of her precious research.

-o-

"Hey."

"…Klaus?"

"It's Kol."

"Oh."

Kol nods as he walks towards Caroline, a breakfast tray with a bowl of tomato soup and a cup of ginger tea in his hands. The blonde smiles weakly at him as he helps her sit up and places the tray in front of her, afterwards taking a seat on the edge of her bed.

"Nik said you've been feeling ill in the mornings so I brought you soup…I mean, I love my brother to death but the pinnacle of his cooking abilities is French toast and sometimes he burns even that…"

Caroline laughs softly, looking down at the breakfast tray and letting the rich aroma of the tomato soup fill her senses. She's been so nauseous all morning that she barely even realized she's already hungry. Kol motions at the spoon as a silent invitation, which she gladly accepts. The soup tastes of the homey English countryside itself and feels even more wonderful when it warms her queasy stomach.

"Thanks, Kol. I feel a lot better."

"Well consider this an attempt to make up for the less than hospitable welcome you were greeted with last night." Kol replies, his broad shoulders rising and falling in an indirectly apologetic shrug.

"Oh…" her voice trails. "It's fine. I understand what it might've looked like to you guys…"

He smiles at her, and there's a warmth in Kol's smile that just makes Caroline think he's a genuinely nice person despite this weird Sherlock meets Michael Westen meets David Garrett meets Mark Zuckerberg meets Gordon Ramsay vibe he projects.

"I'm sorry things were a bit craggy last night." Kol tells her rather sheepishly. "And I know we don't know each other very well yet, but the thing is you're having Nik's kid and that makes you part of the family now. So I just want you to know that I'm here for you if there's anything you need and Finn and Sage are too."

Caroline smiles back sincerely. "Thank you. That means a lot to me."

"And believe me I wish I could say the same about Bekah, but she's a bit distrusting when it comes to girls around us... I don't know, must be what happens when you have four older brothers. But I'm sure she'll come around… maybe next millennium…"

Then blonde stifles a laugh before having at another spoonful of the tomato soup. Well, at least there's one good thing that came out of this pregnancy mess – she gets to eat amazing food that honestly tastes even better than anything she's ever had at those fancy hotel restaurants that Damon often took her to when they were still together. _Mental note to self, your next boyfriend should be at least half as good as Kol when it comes to cooking_, Caroline thinks.

"Oh Lord –"

She cringes, pale cheeks flushing red in embarrassment when she realizes what she just thought to herself, and suddenly she feels like throwing up again. Here she is in apartment in Lennox that is NOT HERS because she's pregnant from a one-night stand and she's already thinking about her _next boyfriend_.

_You are so gonna be a terrible mother, Caroline. You're gonna be worse than terrible. You're going to be worse than Kelly Donovan!_

Kol looks at his brother's baby mama and tilts his head quizzically. "Oh Lord what?"

"Er, oh Lord, four brothers." Caroline reasons out, clearing her throat and searching desperately for words in an effort to continue the conversation. Ugh, anything to keep her mind on sane, reasonable, wholesome topics. "I'm an only child and I can't imagine… are all of you here in Chicago?"

Kol grins, shaking his head. "You really don't know a lot about Nik yet, huh?"

"No, I don't even know what his shoe size is."

"And you're thinking about his shoe size, of all things, because…?"

"Oh, no, I –" Caroline stammers, blushing even harder. Yes, please, why on earth is she thinking about Klaus' shoe size of all things?

"I know, I know, I was kidding." Kol assures her with a good-natured chuckle, deciding against adding that Caroline' obviously already seen what Nik's packing so there's no need to speculate proportions based on shoe size. "You know what, let me give you a crash course about our family…"

Kol moves a bit closer to her on the bed and takes his phone out, pressing a few buttons to show her a photo. It's one of him, Klaus and a guy who Caroline hasn't met. All three men are smiling broadly and they look like they're in some sort of grassy, tree-lined field and… wait, is that a_ giant orange frog statue_ behind them?

"That's my eldest brother Elijah. He's a lawyer and he's back home in England helping my Mum run the family business… horse racing…"

Caroline reserves the 'why is there a giant frog behind you' question for later and studies the man in the photo with Klaus and Kol. He's tall, strapping, and carries himself with the same dignified air as Rebekah, but his expression is filled with warm friendliness that seems to be totally absent from the catty Mikaelson sister. With his dark brown hair and gorgeous hazel eyes, it's easy to tag him as Kol's brother, but it's difficult to find similarities between him and Klaus. (Then again, it's not as if Damon looked anything like Stefan.)

"I remember Klaus mentioning something about working with horses the first time we met…" she recounts quietly.

The younger Mikaelson's eyes light up. "Did he, now."

"He said he was a horse trainer. So do you guys own a stable?"

"Sort of… It's been in my mother's family for… well forever." Kol replies, smiling at Caroline as he tucks his phone back into his pocket. "Elijah, he's very intellectual but he has this affability about him that lets him get along well with other people. Seriously, folks back home adore him like he's Prince William – you know, GQ perfect, can't do anything wrong, and he's not balding so you could even argue that he's better than William. And the rest of us are Harry and Beatrice and Eugenie with all the wild antics and crazy hats."

Caroline bites the inside of her cheeks to muffle a chuckle. She's seen Klaus in a shirt three times larger than his size courtesy of Damon, and it was, lamentably, really funny. Imagine him with an over the top fascinator hat.

"Anyway, next there's Finn. He's a lawyer too. A bit too staid if you ask me, the proper Englishman and everything, but he's really one of the most generous people you'll ever come across."

"And he lives next door with you and Rebekah."

"Yes. Which is awesome because it's easy to talk him into stuff like footing the tab for a Cabo vacation or buying an ice cream compressor from Breville - have you seen those things? They're glorious. But it's also awful since he's a disciplinarian. When I was charged for DUI he insisted he go as my lawyer and the fuck, instead of haggling for a more lenient sentence he bloody told the judge to give me the maximum number of community service hours."

"I guess I can relate to that figure of authority." Caroline tells him. "My mom's the town sheriff back home in Virginia. One time when I was in high school I got drunk and she got the local bartender arrested not even three minutes later."

Kol grins. "We better hope she doesn't get Nik arrested then."

Eeep. Speaking of Klaus and her mom. Caroline still has three months to go, but…

"So then there's Nik…"

She doesn't miss the slight pause that Kol takes, as if he's not sure what to tell her. Her eyes drift towards him and he keeps his silence for a couple of seconds before pursing his lips.

"Nik, he's... he gets a little moody sometimes. Not that he ever goes violent or throws a Charlie Sheen with tiger blood and goddesses, heavens no. But he shuts himself in. And you see him and you talk to him and he looks okay and he talks to you and it seems like everything is fine but you feel that he's not really there and you don't know what he's thinking and you don't know if he's ever going to let you in again."

Caroline looks at Kol. For a moment she sees a trace of wistfulness swimming to the surface of his ever cheerful eyes, but the next second Kol shakes his head and laughs.

There's something heartbreaking about it, how someone who seems so carefree lets himself get affected by an emotional matter, but at the same time it's something that she does not completely understand. Klaus has gone out of his way to do everything for her and the baby, and she has always felt like he's been there for her.

She swallows guiltily as she wonders whether his 'being there' for her was the reason he hasn't been there for his family.

"Sorry, I'm rambling." Kol apologizes.

"No, no, it's okay." Caroline insists. She casts her eyes downward, staring at a carrot cube in the soup bowl, feeling slightly uncomfortable. "Um, so it started when he learned about me?"

"What? Oh, no, don't blame yourself, sweet pea. It's just that Nik's been through a lot in the past couple of years – we've all been through a lot. It's kind of complicated and honestly until now things aren't all that sorted out, but don't trouble yourself with the fuss. Can't be good for the baby."

And then Kol smiles, as if trying to hold on to some faraway memory. "My brother's been a bit distant lately, but believe me, he's a good guy. He's always taken care of me and Bekah, and I know he'll always take care of you. You're family now, Caroline."

-o-

**PLEASE DO NOT SKIP THIS NOTE IT IS VERY IMPORTANT**

If you're not familiar with equestrian terms, you may find yourself asking some questions when you get to the next half of the story so please take two minutes to read these five definitions.

1. Dressage – described as horse ballet/gymnastics. (Think Anne Romney's horse.) Dressage horses DO NOT jump obstacles but they perform, at the subtlest cue from their riders, a pre-set series of physically demanding movements that must appear supple and refined.

2. Cross Country (XC) – tests the horse's bravery, endurance and trust in its rider by making them navigate an obstacle-filled course which they must finish within time limit. XC is the second phase of Eventing, the triathlon of equestrian sports; the first phase is dressage while the last is showjumping, where horses are required to jump fences of various heights.

3. Grand Prix (GP) – the highest level of competition in dressage. Includes the Olympics and the European/North American Dressage Championships. One of its phases is Grand Prix Kur, a freestyle set to music where riders are allowed to decide the order of moves to perform/add moves other than those required.

4. CCI4* - the highest level of competition in eventing. Aside from the Olympics, there are only six four-star events held every year – Rolex Kentucky, Badminton Horse Trials, Burghley Horse Trials (if a rider wins these three events in the same year he wins the Rolex Grandslam of Eventing title + $350,000), Australian International, Luhmuhlen Horse Trials and Etoiles de Pau.

5. Sire – the father of a horse. Its mother is referred to as 'Dam'. In addition, a female horse is called a mare, an uncastrated male is called a stallion and a castrated male is called a gelding.

-o-

At about ten o'clock in the morning, Damon Salvatore slips out of his SDC office with a short nod of advisory at his ever-so-smitten secretary and makes his way to the nearby Bernard Nadler Dentistry Clinic at Boone Heights, Carlyle Avenue.

His appointment for an oral prophylaxis (aka teeth cleaning, why do people with white coats like using terms that sound so complicated when they mean something so easy) isn't until eleven, but he likes to come in a bit early so he can chat a little with good old Doc Ned before the procedure. What, you thought he'd go to some cleavage-bearing, stilleto-wearing tooth-fairy representative to have her jam funny things into his mouth? No thank you, he'll stick to the nice fatherly man who took out his first loose tooth when he was five and every other tooth that ever had to leave his mouth after that.

He enters the clinic and is greeted by smile from one of Doc Ned's assistants.

"Hi Damon!" Arabella beams from behind the reception counter. The dental intern motions for him to take a seat at the receiving area. "Early as usual, so you'll have to wait a while..."

"Thanks A, I'll knock myself out." Damon replies simply. At any other day he might've flashed him an 'I'm-sexy-and-I-know-it' smile that would make her swoon, but you know what – he's tired today. Which is a pretty pathetic thing to say at just ten in the morning. But Caroline couldn't come in because she was having morning sickness (which, of course, she couldn't explicitly say) and Andie stormed into his office to complain about how people can't just be absent when they want to because they're chasing a timeline for a new building's opening, and obviously Damon had to defend Care ("So you're expecting people to know in advance that they're going to be sick the next day?") but Andie won't have any of it because whatever Damon says she'll just reply "Of course you're going to take your 'best friend's' side!" with a special emphasis on best friend, the bitter kind of emphasis that insinuates there's something more than friendship between them.

Ugh. Get him a shot of vodka and tonic right now.

He makes himself comfortable on the leather couch and looks around the room. There's only one other patient waiting in there, this cute girl-next-door in a navy sweater, denim pants and ankle boots. She's young, maybe a college student, totally seems like the outdoorsy type. She looks friendly enough but pays Damon no attention whatsoever because her eyes are trained on a magazine she's reading.

Out of sheer curiosity Damon squints for a view of the magazine's cover - Horse and Hound, the title says - but then his eyes suddenly widen like someone just shoved an iceberg up his very fine ass when he gets to see the rest of the cover.

In front of him is a picture of a huge brown horse jumping a very high, very scary looking hedge with the bright red HSBC logo on it. Mounted on the horse, with an intensively driven, arctic-cold look on his face, is none other than...

"Klaus?"

_What the mother-effin hell?_

Damon slowly looks up to stare at the girl. She's still bent on reading the magazine and won't even give the Salvatore a one-second glance if his life depended on it.

He starts to scour his surprise-muddled brain for a decent opening line that he could use to start a conversation – he has to get his hands on that magazine, seriously; like what the hell is Caroline's baby daddy doing there - when his phone suddenly sounds off a short but clearly audible incoming email alert tone.

The girl looks up and _finally_, Damon makes eye contact.

"Hi." He says immediately, willing himself to sound as casual (but still charming) as he can. The text message is promptly forgotten. "Horse and Hound. Barn rat, huh?"

She smiles. "Yeah, sort of. Do you ride too?"

Damon thinks about it. He does. Or, well, did. His father had him and Stefan take lessons one summer when they were kids and had a family vacation at Greenfield Park, but those lessons were on ponies. Buttercream and Butternut, ah, bless their little giddy souls. After that he's never even touched a pair of jodhpurs.

"A bit. Just enough to know about walk-trot-canter and maybe a little show hunting." He replies with a return-smile. The truth is he doesn't even have a single idea what show hunting actually is – is that the one where you jump the pole-y things like in the Olympics or the one where you jump hedges like Mikey Mikaelson's doing on that magazine cover - but he remembers that the trainer who taught him and Stefan how to ride was a show hunter. "I'm Damon, by the way."

"Kaitlin." the girl introduces herself. "I've been doing hunt seat equitation for a while, but I'm starting dressage this term."

_Dressage? What the heck is dressage?_

"Nice to meet you, Kaitlin. So, I take that you're in college?"

"Uh-huh, second year at Northwestern."

"Ah, the best school in all of Chicago. I went there too. A long time ago." Damon says with a forced though impish-looking grin.

"No way! What did you major in?"

"Managerial Analytics. I barely passed, by the way. I don't even know what I was doing there, I hate spreadsheets."

"Ditto, that's why I went for Journalism. Very little maths."

"So where's your horse boarded?" he continues to ask, trying to steer the conversation towards the magazine. He drapes a stretched arm on the couch's backboard and crosses his legs in an effort to look relaxed and hopefully convince the girl that he's just some guy who wants to chat while waiting at the dentist's. "My last year there the team had to go to Vaughn Equestrian to ride."

The attempt to appear lax seems to work. Kaitlin closes the magazine and faces Damon.

"Ugh, we still do." she says, talking more freely now. "But at least the trainers at Vaughn's are really good. When I told my trainer that I'm thinking about shifting to dressage he lent me this back edition of Horse and Hound -"

_Which I now need you to lend me_, Damon groans inwardly.

"- because his friend, who's one of the best dressage trainers in England, made a write-up for people who're considering getting into dressage." Kaitlin finishes.

Okay now this is almost painful for Damon, to pretend to be interested in this dressage thing when he has zero idea what it is, but - "Really. Can I see -"

"Miss Kaitlin Thoreaubrad?" Arabella calls out.

"Here!"

"Doctor Nadler will see you now."

_No Doc not now I need to have that_ -

Damon cringes as Kaitlin smiles at him and stands up, his fists balling up his sides in desperation. His eyes are fixed intently on the equestrian magazine the girl is holding, and if he could look any harder he'd be boring holes right through it. Really, the only thing missing is him hissing "My preciousss!"

Ms. Equestrian notices the harrowingly frantic look on the Salvatore's face and frowns slightly in confusion. "Hey, are you okay?"

Damon's eyes barely leave the Holy Grail of Horse and Hound. Maybe if he could make out what issue it is he could have one of those idiots interning in SDC find him a copy -

"Uh, totally, I'm fine. Hey Kaitlin, would you mind if I borrow..."

Kaitlin blinks. She follows Damon's eyes into her H&H.

"This?" she says, gesturing at the magazine.

"Yeah. I just... I'm really interested in that dressage for beginners article you were talking about. I've been thinking about going back on horseback for a while now and dressage is something that's always fascinated me... because..."

"Because?"

Goddammit why on earth did he have to add 'because'?

"...because the horses... they're so…"

_Good point, what are the horses like? And what is this dressage thing in the first place, for crying out loud!_

"... so strong and incredibly powerful and they push themselves to their limit and that's really what I want for myself." Damon blurts out.

Well, he figures that you have to be strong and powerful and you really have to push your limits if you're jumping all those ridiculous things, right?

He's relieved beyond fuck when Kaitlin nods eagerly.

"I know right!" the girl exclaims. "I mean, a lot of people think dressage horses are slow and weak and stupid because they don't jump sky-high fences like in eventing –"

_What? What do you mean 'don't jump'?_

" - but they need to be strong and supple and sensitive and refined and let's face it, it's like a billion times easier to ask a horse to jump than to ask for a piaffe, right?"

She hands him the magazine and his hands tremble a little as he holds it.

"Just be here when I get out, okay? I have to give it back to my trainer."

The Salvatore mutters an almost unintelligible 'uh-huh' and Kaitlin smiles at him again before leaving to see Doc Ned. Damon looks down at the cover and Klaus is still here, aquiline eyes seemingly glaring at him, as if demanding Damon to get his hands off of the Mikaelson's picture. The cover story says 'THE STAR OF PAU. Niklaus Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson and LRI Achilles win Etoiles de Pau CCI4* 2005'.

He opens the blessed publication and begins to read.

-o-

You know that episode in The Vampire Diaries where Joseph Morgan, almighty hybrid Original asks Candice Accola, small-town girl who always gets tortured, to the Morgan Family's ball and she doesn't have anything to wear (whereas Nina Dobrev, Little Miss Perfect, somehow has a poofy glittery ball gown all prepared for the 'unexpected' occasion) and Joseph so heroically sends Candice a really beautiful dress (which is like a bajillion times better-looking than Nina's) and Candice at first doesn't even want to touch the dress but later she finds herself looking at it intently and starting to consider (just a teeny tiny bit) wearing it to the ball after all?

It's the exact same scenario in the Mikaelson living room as Klaus finds himself looking intently at the stack of papers on the coffee table in front of him and starting to consider (just a teeny tiny bit) reading them after all.

He sighs. This is hardly the way for him to know his child's mother, reading about her in news and website articles. Internet stalking is for people who'd like to know about someone they don't have personal access to, not for a guy sitting in the living room who wants to know something about the girl in his bedroom about five bloody cartwheels away. But on the other hand, it's not like it's the most appropriate thing in the world to just go there and look at Caroline and say "Gurl what's the score between you and Damon?"

"Fine." He mutters under his breath. He does plan to get to know Caroline better as things go along – hell, they're having a child together so they have to work out some kind of amicable relationship here – but maybe this 'research' Bekah oh-so-kindly provided might be a good enough 'primer' about his baby mama. You know, like when you want to buy a car but you don't want to go to the dealer just yet so you read about it first?

Except that whatever happens, Klaus actually has to buy this car and it's going to stay with him for the rest of his life.

He picks out a random sheet of paper from the stack and puts on his glasses to start reading.

_**Bleacher Report's Top 10 NFL WAGS of 2012**_

_8. Caroline Forbes_

_Brady Wolfe's new lady has been keeping a low profile since they hooked up this summer – they've only been spotted together twice. Luckily for us, one of those times was at a beach in Florida where she rocked this scorching blue number while soaking up some sun with the Bears QB. Brady, anytime you get too busy to rub sunscreen on those legs, ring us up and we'll be there. _

_Aside from being a total steal, we also heard that Caroline is no dumb blonde. Word is she graduated from Northwestern with a GPA up in the high three point nines and ya know what, that's what got us to give her spot number 8 on our list even though she's barely been seen at the bleachers. Sexy chick is hot but smart sexy chick is even hotter in our book so we say Wolfeboy should do the world a favor and show her off more often._

Oh. So that was the NFL WAG thing Damon was talking about.

What he didn't talk about was the picture – which Klaus forces himself to refrain from looking at. This is his kid's mom, for Christ's sake, he's got to have more respect for her than ogling at some photo of her in a two-piece.

_Okay, Niklaus Mikaelson, turns out this is a really lame excuse to read about Caroline_. The logical part of his head starts to tell him. If this article from the Bleacher Report is any indication, he's never going to find anything that would even remotely give him a clue what's between Caroline and Damon now. All he's going to read about is gossip, and that's saying it generously.

He closes his eyes tiredly. He doesn't want to ask Caroline about it directly and he won't find the answers from internet articles, so maybe he just has to play it by the ear. Go on taking care of Caroline while she's staying with him and see what happens with her and Damon as they go along. Perhaps when he and Caroline are closer he can ask her, but for now…

Klaus hears the sound of a door closing and then footsteps walking towards the living room, so he quickly puts the Bleacher Report article back on the paper stack and takes off his glasses. Then he sits back and pretends that he's… er, staring at the wall clock.

"Where's Bekah?"

Kol emerges from the hallway carrying the breakfast tray he brought into his brother's room and makes his way to the kitchen. He places the tray on top of the counter before walking back to the living room, where he leans forward on the back of the couch facing Klaus, not bothering to take a seat.

"She left. Said she has a class this morning." Klaus replies simply. And then, "How's Caroline?"

"She's sleeping. We chatted a bit, she ate the soup and drank a bit of your ginger tea. She hates the stuff, Nik. I'll make a batch of ginger cookies after I get home from the hospital today. Hopefully she'll get those down easier."

The older Mikaelson nods. He's just glad Caroline is doing better. He doesn't know if he can handle the guilt if every morning in the near future turns out to be like this.

"Jeez Nik, don't tell me you actually read all that crap Bekah dug up." Kol says when he notices the papers on the table.

Klaus shrugs and ignores the question.

"Fine, whatever." Kol gives up, uncharacteristically rather quickly. "Look, I have to go now, my shift starts in half an hour. So I know you're probably going to get something from Millesime for lunch for you and Caroline."

You hear that? Kol's leaving. Thank you, Lord.

"Yes, Kol, I am not letting a pregnant woman starve in my house." Klaus confirms for his brother's benefit.

"I also know that you'll probably order fish, because I know you like yellow fin tuna and because fish is healthy and all that."

"The reminder is much appreciated. Now please go."

"I also know that you probably don't know that pregnant women _shouldn't_ be eating tuna because it has mercury content that FDA considers high for developing babies."

Oh.

Well there goes Klaus' plan of yellow fin tuna for lunch.

Kol grins triumphantly. "So you go ahead and order that yellow fin tuna you like so much, but get Caroline salmon instead. No mercury content warning there."

Klaus purses his lips grudgingly. "Duly noted."

"And I also know that you don't even know that Millesime is not the place to go to for salmon. For yellow fin tuna, acceptable, but for salmon – just no."

"What?"

"It's considerably far from here, unlike Millesime which is just a few minutes' walk, but Adelinde's has the best salmon amandine in Chicago. So I took the liberty of asking a friend to drop by Adelinde's to get some salmon amandine for Caroline and yellow fin tuna for you. Now you don't even have to do anything, just wait for your lunch to get here."

Klaus stares at Kol in disbelief.

"You're totally welcome." Kol beams at his brother before striding out of the apartment.

-o-

_To: Damon Salvatore (drsalvatore .us)_

_From: Alaric Saltzman (ajsaltzman .us)_

_Subject: Re Caroline_

_Rose has received the documents from Klaus' lawyer. She's studying the applicable laws so we know what to ask for and what to give, but from what we know Illinois law requires 20% of the non-custodial parent's monthly income as payment for child support. Rose will call you when she's done reviewing the documents._

_How is Caroline?_

-o-

Muse.

It's a simple noun that comes from the Latin word Musa, the goddesses of art in Greek Mythology. A muse is someone who inspires an artist, who lends him creativity, who lends him the gift of art itself.

An artist does not have to be 'in love' with his muse. He doesn't even have to care about her. He just has to look at her and feel that fateful trembling in his fingers, that blazing eagerness in his chest – the start of a painting, of a poem, of a song.

Klaus takes in a deep breath, open hand feeling a tepid tingling coursing from the tips of his fingers to the planes of his palms as he walks into the room and carefully sits on the edge of the bed's end. Behind him, the door is left ajar, telling in its openness. Klaus didn't mean to stay long – he just wanted to check on Caroline. But he saw her and there was something about the sight of her sleeping that spoke to him and now he finds himself studying her features as she sleeps.

His hands remember drawing the curving outline of her face, the lash-lined arch that begins her eyes, the smooth bow of her shoulders. He remembers all the shades and tints and hues of blue that he blended in an attempt to render the exact blue-green of her orbs. He remembers everything he felt that night he met her – how she made his fingers pine for a brush, crave for colour, hunger for the satisfaction of filling a blank canvas.

She makes him feel it even now, makes him want to grab a pen and start sketching this woman in his bed. And maybe this pile of papers that Rebekah gave him might find better use as sketching sheets, he thinks as he places the papers down beside him on the bed for a moment. In his head he already sees how he wants to draw Caroline now – turned to her side, head cradled by the pillows, eyes peacefully closed. Golden hair falling lightly upon her shoulders, body embraced by the softness of his sheets, right hand holding gently onto the edge of the covers wrapped about her chest. This was what she looked like the last time he saw her that morning before she left his apartment in haste.

He has found his muse… and yet, it doesn't quite feel as good as it should feel like. For all that she makes him feel as an artist, as a man, as himself – she has only made him start a painting. He has never finished anything still.

His thoughts are interrupted when he hears the sound of his doorbell ringing. He stands up distractedly and makes his way out of the room to open the door. The sight that greets him, however, makes him frown in confusion.

"What are you doing here?"

Katherine rolls her eyes, thrusting an Adelinde's paper bag in front of her boss. "Nice to see you too, Klaus. There's your chow. Enjoy. You're welcome."

"You're Kol's 'friend'?" Klaus asks, forehead creasing in bafflement.

"I don't know, your brother just called me all of a sudden and was like 'Hey can you drop by Adelinde's to buy this and that and give it to Nik before lunch?' and I owe him some cab money so I said 'Fine'. Now here I am and if you're not planning to take this stuff then just tell me so I don't waste my time standing her like a goat." Little Ms. Feisty tells him impatiently.

Klaus takes the bag from Katherine but the question and answer portion is not yet done. "Why the bloody hell do you owe him cab money?"

"Because I slept with him like last week and I couldn't find my wallet in the morning." She says with a shrug.

"What?"

Katherine laughs. "Take a break, Klaus. When did you get so gullible? I took a cab to the gallery and it turned out that I forgot my wallet and Kol was there so he lent me forty bucks."

The Mikaelson stares at his favourite employee with obvious distrust, though he doesn't say anything else.

"Oh come on now." Katherine says, rolling her eyes again. "Me, sleeping with your brother – any of your brothers – sadly for them will never happen. I'll never put myself in a situation where there's a one in a billion chance that I'll become related to you."

"Trust me, that's a reassurance much appreciated." Klaus mutters.

"Well, my turn to ask then. Why is Kol asking me to get food for you? Are you on house arrest or something?"

"It's disturbing to think that you care – "

"Oh I do, I'd throw a party if you were to be thrown into jail."

"Find another reason to party if you're so inclined, Katherine Pierce –"

"And who's the visitor? Kol's obviously not going to ask me to buy two meals if you're the only person who's going to eat them."

Klaus suddenly pauses, his eyes narrowing as though an important matter just crossed his mind. Katherine waits for him to make another scathing retort, but it never comes – in fact her boss isn't even looking at her anymore.

They won't be able to keep this pregnancy a secret, Klaus comes to realize. Not that he wants to keep it a secret but… people around Klaus (other than his family) will eventually learn about Caroline and people around Caroline (other than Damon) will eventually learn that she's pregnant.

He's not interested in getting into a relationship with her, all the more that he has no intention of marrying her… so how the hell is he going to spare Caroline from the humiliation of getting knocked up from a one night stand?

-o-

"Ric?"

"Damon. Why'd you call, is something up?"

"Yeah, kind of… Listen man, can you do me a favor?"

"Unless you're going to ask me to hijack a plane, I guess yes. What is it about?"

"Can you ask one of your guys to check out something for me? I need all the info I can get on the Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson family. They're from Ascot, in southern England."

"Let me write that down… Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson…Ascot, England…"

"I need legit sources, Ric. Anything you can give me that's verified."

"Wait – Mikaelson? As in Klaus, the guy who got Caroline pregnant?"

"Yeah, it's him alright..."

"What's the matter? Is he involved in something shady…"

"I don't know, Ric, I haven't been around him much. But I read something about him… and I just want to make sure he doesn't pull a fast one on Caroline."

-o-

When Caroline wakes up, she's alone in her room and her nausea has settled down to just a slight discomfort. She glances at the clock on the bedside table and lets out a yawn as she sees that it's eleven o'clock. For a moment she considers going to work for the latter half of the day, but then she closes her eyes and decides that she doesn't want to deal with Andie's bitching for this entire day. Ever since Andie and Damon broke up the brunette has been all but hateful to Caroline, graciously taking every opportunity to say something scornful or point out something wrong that Caroline did. And it sucks worse than a cheap vacuum cleaner because Andie is her boss. She doesn't even get the bitch, really – it's not as if she did anything to break her and Damon up, so why is Andie taking it all out on her? If she has an axe to grind, why won't she resign and go look for a job where Damon isn't her employer?

She stretches from her curled up position and flexes her feet. Her toes touch something at the end of the bed.

She sits up and looks at the direction of her feet. There at the bed end is an amassment of papers, which she doesn't remember putting there. She doesn't even remember seeing them before.

She reaches out to grab a page and looks at it. It's a printed picture of her with Damon at one of the corporate parties she attended with him when they were still together.

_Why is this here?_ She thinks.

She takes the entire pile of papers. She skims through the stack and frowns as she realizes that they're all pictures and articles and news clips _about her_. Local paper mentions from Virgina, society pages from the Chicago Tribune, all those entertainment articles from her break-up with Brady.

_What the_ –

Her eyes narrow, her head fuming with annoyance and disbelief at what she just saw. Wow. She moved in with Klaus hoping to know him better so they might hopefully become friends for the sake of their child, but this is how he chooses to get to know her – through internet trash.

Wow. Just wow.

She is so pissed off right now she wants to pack her bags and leave.

-o-

**Horse and Hound Magazine, 21-30 June 2005**

**The Star of Pau**

It is a little funny to note that LRI Achilles was originally bred for dressage.

"He comes from a long line of dressage horses, but I don't think he likes flat work that much." Achilles' rider, 21-year old eventer Niklaus Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson says with amusement. It's hard to disagree – when the bay Hanoverian was younger, he did every imaginable (and embarrassing) antic in the sandbox: ignoring the halt, making a volte out of a serpentine, hand-galloping down the long side and even practically cantering backwards. The most memorable of all is his first CCI at Faustlinnex, where 'Ace' enthusiastically inducted his rider into the 'Disqualified Because Horse Jumped Out of the Arena' club.

It's not strictly a question of horrid temperament nor sheer incapability. There are days when Achilles is in a good mood, during which you can expect a score below 45. And then there are the days when he decides to do things his way. "He's very spirited, very head strong. Cross-country thrills him to no end and he's keen on jumping as well - I think that's where all the adrenaline during dressage comes from." Klaus will tell you. They've been a team for over six years, and the only reason why they have a roomful of eventing medals is because Achilles is brilliantly consistent in cross country, for all his unpredictability in the flat.

Fortunately, the 17h stallion has seemingly mellowed with the monkeyshines these past few years. Though Klaus says Achilles "still does something to show that he's in control" every so often, he now rides considerably more good tests than bad ones. Take his latest dressage score: a strong 42.3 showing on Friday, which the rider-cavalier pair built on to clinch the championship trophy at this year's Etoiles De Pau CCI*4 Three Day Event held in Pyrenees, France.

It's a spectacular victory that's taken the equestrian world by storm, catapulting Klaus and Ace from kids-to-watch-for into full-fledged eventing celebrity status. Six months shy of his twenty second birthday, Klaus is now officially the youngest rider to win a CCI4* (the former record was held by eventing royalty William Pitt-Fox, who was 25 when he won his first four-star at Burghley in 1994) while ten-year old Achilles ties with Karen O'Pronnor's Theodore as the youngest horse to win a CCI4*. If you think that's impressive enough, wait until you learn that among the 67 other entrants that Klaus and Achilles had to trump on their way to the win includes 18-time CCI4* winner and Pau defending champion William Pitt-Fox, Olympic medalists Stefan Brocolliori, Phillip Cotton, Bettina Hey, Coraline Powell, Mary Queen, Leslie Rule, Grey Teulere and Nicolas Touzisnot.

Team Leventhorpe-Rath's road to their latest win began with a 7th place entry on the dressage scoreboard at Pau Day 1, a performance whom judge Marianne Clangwee described in her comments as "An exceptional demonstration of impulsion." They moved up to third by running one of the six penalty-free cross country efforts on Saturday, which saw William Pitt-Fox retire betting favourite Parklane Falcon after an uncharacteristic refusal at fence 7, and ultimately edged score leaders Oliver Townstart on Sea Vision and Sinead Halbadge on Scottie Harley with a 1.2 time penalty on Day 3's showjumping round to claim this year's Etoiles de Pau crown and the EUR 35,000 prize it comes with.

Before Pau, Klaus and Achilles have had only two other CCI4* showings – a decent 23rd place finish in Badminton last year and an improved 15th place in Burghley this year – but they're fixtures in BE classes and lower CCI and CIC levels, where they have had numerous podium places and top 10 finishes. Klaus has also been a member of the British Young Rider Eventing Team for the past three years, raking in a total of four golds, three silvers and one bronze in the European Young Rider Championships.

Really, the 42.3 figure being the pair's personal best in dressage is just the icing on the cake.

All eyes and ears were on the University of Exeter's Equine Sports Management student during the press conference that followed, but Klaus played the victory down with a short smile. "I think it's more of a stroke of luck. A lot of horses were retired during cross country and some rails were surprisingly knocked down at showjumping, and that let us move up."

In a twist that makes the story even more amusing, there is not a person in this world who could be happier for Klaus and Achilles than champion dressage equestrian Elijah Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson, Klaus' older brother. Elijah, who earlier this year smashed the European record for Grand Prix Kur with a masterful 85.54% score at the European Dressage Championships in Hagen, Germany, was present on all three days of Etoiles de Pau in support of Klaus.

"I'm immensely proud of him." The evidently thrilled EDC individual gold medallist said. "Nik has always been persistent at training, but the diligence with which he worked for this is just above anything else I've seen from him."

And Elijah should know. While Klaus has been modest about his victory in France, he isn't the least bit hesitant to credit Achilles' improved dressage performances to training with his brother. He says that Elijah has younger horses schooling below Medium levels, and he and Achilles have been training with them since they started preparing for the transition to four-star two years ago.

How does it feel like to train with a dressage champion? "Elijah is incredibly patient. When he teaches a movement, he doesn't just show it and then make you do it over and over until you get it right. There's always an explanation of the theoretical and practical aspects of the move. I think I learned as much about geometry from him teaching the counter-canter as all those years I spent at Eton. And then he has all these ideas about how to motivate his horses – he just knows how to make them tick. He was the one who suggested that we let Ace tag along to shows where he isn't competing. So I'm doing a shoulder-in or galloping into the water or jumping a 3'3 on another horse at a BE100 and Elijah and Ace are playing around in the showgrounds. At first I didn't have an idea what he was getting at, but when Ace figured out that not every show meant action, he started to calm down. That's when we got better at dressage."

But Elijah is also very focused and very strict when training, it is revealed. Apparently when the older equestrian came back from the European championships, the first thing he did wasn't even unpack his bags. "He literally went straight to the training arena. I was working on my five-step walk backward and I heard someone say 'Nik, Ace's tail is swishing like he's swatting a horde of flies and that's going to get you a 3.' – I didn't even know that he had returned from Hagen until then." Klaus recounted, drawing laughs from the audience, which included the brother in discussion.

Interestingly, the Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelsons are not the only siblings in this picture. Elijah's best mount, twelve year-old fan favourite LRI Antares (Ari), is half-brother to LRI Achilles. Both stallions are out of the Hanoverian mare LRI Alina, who descends from the powerhouse bloodlines of Abraxas and Nikolino through LRI Aleksandr. Antares, sired by KWPN WEG and GP medallist LRI Linares (LRI Cefiro x LRI Linea by LRI Schubaltz), is registered as a KWPN while Achilles, sired by Baden Württemberg GP champion Aurenheimmer-Michelori (Aurenheimmer-Michelino x Lomnika by Kramnik) is registered as a Hanoverian.

Horsemanship runs deep in the siblings' blood. Their mother, Lady Esther Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson, successfully showed up to Prix St George on Antares' damsire Aleksandr while their father, laywer Mikael Mikaelson, is an accomplished eventer who held notable wins in Burghley and Bleinheim before he hung up his competition reins to focus on managing his family's law firm. None of Elijah and Klaus' three other siblings ride competitively, although one of them is a big part of Team Leventhorpe-Rath: violin prodigy Kol Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson, who headed for the Royal College of Music this fall, arranges the freestyles for all of Elijah's Kur performances. His last work was the polarizing violin-lead freestyle of the Pirates of the Caribbean's _He's a Pirate_, which Elijah and Antares performed to at Hagen.

But the brothers' best familial advantage is perhaps in the person of their grandfather, Lord Viktor-Elijah Leventhorpe-Rath, Earl of Reede. The well-known equine enthusiast is Elijah and Klaus' principal patron through Leventhorpe-Rath Investments (LRI), which breeds, trains and owns all of the brothers' horses. Lord Reede currently sits as the Chairman of Ascot Racecourse Ltd., owner of the most famous thoroughbred racing venue in Europe, the Ascot Racecourse. Now valued at close to £750M with reported revenues of £55M last year following its costly 2003 renovation, the track has been privately owned by the Leventhorpe-Raths since 1913 and continues to be the source of the family's fortune.

_(Continued at next page)_

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A/N:

1. **erica-dreams-in-colour** at tumblr. Go there for the manip featuring equestrian Klaus and Elijah and violinist Kol. :) Also, **she. daydreams. in. colour** at FFN. Go there for the first story featuring my dear Leventhorpe-Rath Mikaelson family titled "My Love is a Sonnet of Blue and Gold." Both links on my profile page.

2. Friends. Please forgive me for the non-replies to reviews or for not reviewing your new stories/updates yet. Next Saturday is reserved for a reply and review marathon. :)

3. Next story to be updated is Solstice. Thank you to everyone who's reviewed, favourited and alerted ALL my stories in both my accounts - you guys are the best and I love you! Hugs and kisses from Erica and Kol. :)


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